A hate crime law in Georgia was headed to the governor's desk Tuesday weeks after Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery was shot by armed white men in what many called a modern-day lynching.
Georgia is one of only a handful of states without hate crimes legislation. The new bill, if signed by the governor, would impose additional penalties for crimes motivated by a victim's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
Gov. Brian Kemp's office said in a statement that the governor "commends the General Assembly’s bipartisan work and will sign House Bill 426 pending legal review."
Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, cheered the decision in a statement through the Georgia NAACP Tuesday.
"My family thanks everyone for not letting my son's death be in vain. I know he is still with us and this law is evidence of that and I look forward to being present when it is signed," Cooper-Jones said.
Ahmaud Arbery case: White men accused won't face Georgia hate crime charges
Rev. James Woodall, State President of the Georgia NAACP, commended legislators for "working with the civil rights community to create a statute that protects Black Georgians from hateful bigotry."
Karen Bennett, chair of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, called the bipartisan support of the bill a "monumental and historic occasion."
"Georgia is no longer going to tolerate hate of any kind," Bennett said. "This is the first step toward making a statement to the world."
The bill passed the Georgia House last year but failed in the state Senate.
Last week, Senate Republicans attempted to add police as a protected class to the hate crimes legislation, but, in a last-minute bid to gain approval, the parties agreed to move those protections to a separate bill, which passed, Bennett said.
The last-minute revision also included mandating data collection on hate crime incidents.
Georgia passed a hate crime bill in 2000, but it did not list specific protected groups, and the state Supreme Court threw it out because it was "unconstitutionally vague."
Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming also do not have hate crime laws, along with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the DOJ. Seventeen states and Puerto Rico have hate crime laws but don’t require data collection on such crimes.
Lawyers and proponents of hate crime laws note that although Indiana technically has a hate crime law on the books, it is too vague to be implemented.
The developments in Georgia come amid a worldwide movement for racial justice and protests against police brutality. On Tuesday, as the hate crime bill passed in the State Capitol, mourners at an Atlanta church one mile away paid their final respects to Rayshard Brooks, 27, who police shot in a Wendy's drive-thru earlier this month.
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