Hate Crime Laws: Punishment to Fit the Crime: A response to Jesse Larner

Jesse Larner sounds a shrill alarm in his broadside against hate crime laws ("Hate Crime/Thought Crime," Spring 2010), raising a variety of seemingly dire libertarian, First Amendment, and slippery-slope arguments. Yet, despite the fact that federal and state hate crime laws have been on the books for forty years, he fails to illustrate his parade of horribles with a single actual case to demonstrate the kind of "policing of mind and tongue" about which he frets. Larner recognizes that hate crimes are a "real problem" and asks many of the right questions about the purpose and application of these laws. But Larner's questions have been thoroughly examined—and answered—by police officials and prosecutors who have enforced them and by dozens of court decisions interpreting these laws. Larner is wrong about the impact of hate violence, the policy purposes of hate crime laws, and their constitutionality.