(Source: MIRS.news, Published 07/11/23) The House-passed Michigan Hate Crime Act is not a “wild west legal approach” or a novel departure from current law or national standards according the bill's sponsor, Rep. Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield).
Nonetheless, some national news outlets are reporting the opposite. They claim misgendering an individual could be prosecuted, noting felony charges and civil fines could be levied for not using an individual’s preferred pronouns. In response, Arbit says such reporting “clearly lacks any foundation in journalistic ethics.”
“It reflects to me how stupid our society has become, that's the bullshit . . . it's what gets spread far and wide a lot faster than the truth,” said Arbit, an openly gay, Jewish man. “Unless you are planning to shoot up a synagogue, assault people at a gay bar, write threatening messages on the wall of a Black church, you’re not going to be charged under the Michigan Hate Crime Act.”
The controversy over HB 4474 was spurred by the definition of intimidation as a prosecutable offense, which Rep. Andrew Beeler (R-Port Huron) said was subjective.
Using the same language from the Michigan stalking statute, the definition of intimidation includes “repeated or continuing harassment” that would cause a “reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested” but does not include “constitutionally protected activity” such as hate speech.
“Hate speech is protected speech, until it crosses into a true threat or intimidation,” Arbit said in a tweet Monday.
“Every person who is in my Twitter mentions talking about ‘what if someone beats me up while calling me a cracker?’ That could be prosecuted as a hate crime,” Arbit told MIRS.
The bill text does not use the word pronouns. However, Beeler said it’s not accurate to say this bill has nothing to do with pronouns as soon as gender ideology and expression are mentioned.
“I would completely refute the comment that (Arbit) made. I don’t think they accurately reflect the bill whatsoever,” Beeler said. “I would encourage people to get in there and read it and ask themselves if we want to leave it to the reasonable individual standard on whether or not you’ve intimidated someone.”
Beeler said he appreciates a nod toward constitutionally protected speech in the bill, but added that he thinks the bill sponsor, several prosecutors and many others consider the act of misgendering as something that could be prosecuted as intimidation.
“If (Arbit’s) answer is no, then I think the conversation is very different,” Beeler said. “I think you’re going to force people to cow into radical gender ideology. I don’t know how (Arbit) could claim that it’s not doing that.”
Arbit said no prosecutor would ever read the definition of intimidation in the bill and feel empowered to charge for misgendering a person, and if they did, “a judge would laugh them out of court.”
The Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan supports the legislation.
Beeler said in a world where people believe a man can become a woman that it’s not too far-fetched to think a prosecutor would want to do something like this.
“(Arbit) is being disingenuous when he says that it’s never going to happen,” Beeler said.
A Detroit News column from last week included an answer from Eli SAVITT, Washtenaw County’s Democratic prosecutor, stating that the First Amendment right to use the wrong pronoun for a transgender individual still exists.
"If somebody says, 'I do not believe you are a man, I believe you are a woman' and misgenders someone, even intentionally, that is not a crime," Savitt said. “That is First Amendment protected speech.”
Arbit told MIRS a Michigan nurse asked him why he would introduce legislation that would risk jail time for her misgendering a patient.
“The fact that she thinks that’s what her government is doing sends a shiver down my spine. … On both sides of the aisle, we have to pause and say, ‘Is this the kind of society that we want to live in? Where we are ruled by fear, lies and demagoguery?’” Arbit said.
Michigan attorney Steve Lehto, explained in a recent YouTube video that “the law does not outlaw the misuse of pronouns.
“If you think that’s what this does, you haven’t read it. I’d suggest that you read it,” he added.
The bill passed the House with a 59-50 vote on June 20.
Arbit said that the state’s hate crime statute, the Ethnic Intimidation Act passed in 1988, needed to be strengthened, because it didn’t protect against hate crimes that target ethnicity despite the law’s title.
Arbit said updating the statute was too much of a “political hot potato" until now, with the largest
LGBTQ+ caucus in state history backing the bill.
Arbit says he has confidence in the bill due to his partnership with the attorney general, spending eight months drafting the legislation even before being elected and sworn in and having read every state and territory’s hate crime statute.
The legislation does not have the narrow interest of one community in mind, rather, all communities are protected under the bill, Arbit said.
"No one, no matter who you are in this state, should ever feel unsafe or threatened because of who they are or the community they belong to,” Arbit said, noting his commitment to seeing the bill passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor has not been diminished.
“In fact, it has strengthened my resolve, if that was even possible,” he noted.
