By Brody Levesque | CINCINNATI, OH -- The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which offers harsher punishments for individuals who commit violent acts on individuals due to their sexual orientation is constitutional. The appellate court's decision upheld an earlier lower court's decision in a case brought by three Michigan religious leaders, who argued that the intent of the act was to punish “thought crimes” and was meant to “eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda.”
The suit was first filed in February 2010 by the conservative Thomas More Law Center, four months after President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law in October 2009. In the filing, the plaintiffs cited bible passages and quoted from English novelist and journalist George Orwell’s Animal Farm, claiming the Shepard-Bryd Act treated certain individuals “more equal than others.”
In their ruling today, the Sixth Circuit justices wrote that the plaintiffs had “not alleged any actual intent” to cause bodily injury to any gay individuals, pointing out that the pastors explicitly denounced “crimes of violence perpetrated against innocent individuals.”
The Hate Crimes Act, the appeals court ruled, “does not prohibit Plaintiffs’ proposed course of speech” and said they “can’t quite pinpoint what it is they want to say that could subject them to prosecution under the Hate Crimes Act.”
The court acknowledged that should the plaintiffs- all pastors - quote the biblical passage Leviticus 20:13, which calls for men who have sex with one another to be put to death, “they have not alleged any intention to do more than merely quote it,” which is not unlawful under the provisions of the Shepard-Bryd Act, the appeals court wrote.
“If the Hate Crimes Act prohibits only willfully causing bodily injury and Plaintiffs are not planning to willfully injure anybody, then what is their complaint? Plaintiffs answer that they fear wrongful prosecution and conviction under the Act. Not only is that fear misplaced, it’s inadequate to generate a case or controversy the federal courts can hear,” the appeals court ruled.
Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, who was also listed as a plaintiff in the suit did not respond to a request from LGBTQNation for comment on today's ruling. The other plaintiff's were pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, and James Combs.
Read the entire ruling here.
Read the entire ruling here.
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