The victims, two young women and a young man, were Muslim. The women wore distinctive hijabs. Many now wonder, including the families of the slain, if Hicks should also be charged with a hate crime.
A crime becomes a hate crime when motivated by a bias against a person of a protected minority class: race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity. The designation acknowledges that crimes committed with malice for a particular protected class are more sinister.
Most states now have some form of a hate crime law on the books, as does the federal government. Hate crime laws are a good idea. A true hate crime is committed, ideologically, against all people who share a similar identity, while a crime committed without a “hate” motivator is committed against the victim or victims individually.
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