Beulah M. Donald taught us how to beat the Klan years ago by suing them into bankruptcy. Since then, Texas provided the second blueprint to beat this malignant hatred that is tearing our country apart. Use the premise of the Texas Abortion Bounty Law except turn it on its head to target hate crimes.
I will use Maine as an example because we are attempting to improve our hate-crime laws to deal with a recent rise in attacks upon minorities. I suggested the following to the Maine State Legislature:
Any Maine resident may sue a person that has been convicted of a state or federal civil rights crime that took place in the state of Maine. All suits are capped at $10,000. To meet the standing threshold, the Maine resident must share the same defining characteristic as the victim of the crime. Legal costs are also covered by the person convicted of the hate crime.
In addition, that same Maine state resident may sue any person who aided or abetted the crime. This includes any person who:
- transported the convicted offender to the scene of the crime.
- who participated in the recruitment or training of the convicted offender.
- supplied weapons of any kind to the convicted offender.
For example, if a person is convicted of a hate crime against a person of color, any person of color who is a Maine resident may sue the person convicted of that crime, the person that drove them to the rally, or the person that recruited and trained them to be a better hate monger.
Like TX, suits are capped at $10,000 and are essentially automatic if the person has standing.
This is why this makes sense. Hate crimes are terrorism. They are meant to spread terror to all the people sharing the characteristics of the victim. Thus an attack on one lesbian is an attack on all lesbians and we have automatic standing in a court of law.
This is where we differ from TX. The “bounty” portion of their law has already been squashed by the courts because some random stranger has no standing to sue because a random woman had an abortion. However, EVERY GLBTQ+ person in America was affected by the
woman who was murdered for flying a rainbow flag. That is the essential purpose of terrorism; to make that group afraid and to change our behavior.
How many people across the country re-thought their presentation of the rainbow flag after that event? How many people changed their behavior out of fear?
This legislation is designed to put a wet blanket on the up and coming neo-nazi groups. In Maine, a budding neo-nazi group is the wet dream of a
single nutjob begging for money and revelance. It wouldn’t take much to sue them out of existence.
Let them make that one mistake…. Then 10,000 similar Mainers sue each and every one of them for 10K each.
And that’s how we take care of that problem…
I encourage you to contact your state legislatures and see if we can get something like this passed. History has shown us what happens with appeasement.
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Minor edit to add the caveat that legal costs are covered by the person convicted of the hate crime. Thus, if some barbarian wants to attack a minority in Maine, I can sue, him, his driver, his instructor, all for 10K each AND have them pay my legal fees on top of it. :)
It won’t take many guilty verdicts before most people realize that any connection to neo-nazis will result in them getting sued into oblivion. That is how we win… force them back into the dark corners of their crypt where they belong.
