(Headline USA) Michigan Democrats passed a bill this week that could criminalize “misgendering” and other forms of “hate speech.”
The state’s House of Representatives passed HB 4474, which updates the state’s hate crime laws to include certain kinds of offensive speech. According to legal experts, such “offensive” speech would include not using someone’s preferred pronouns, since the bill designates “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as protected classes.
Speech considered offensive under the law would be “guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than five years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000.”
“’Intimidate’ means a willful course of conduct involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened, and that actually causes the victim to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened,” the bill reads.
The bill defines “gender identity or expression” as “having or being perceived as having a gender-related self-identity or expression whether or not associated with an individual’s assigned sex at birth.”
Republican state Rep. Angela Rigas blasted the bill as a “continued weaponization of the system against conservatives.”
“The state of Michigan is now explicitly allowing the gender delusion issue to be used as a ‘protected class,’” she said in a statement. “We saw similar concerns when they wanted to pass blocks on ‘conversion’ therapy. It seems Dems want to be in the business of telling people how to think.”
State Rep. Andrew Fink, another Republican, also objected to the bill in a floor speech.
“As it is written, the risk that disfavored opinions will become criminal under this legislation is too severe,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, state Rep. Emily Dievendorf, the first openly nonbinary lawmaker in Michigan, celebrated the passage of the bill on Tuesday.
“Today is just a mixture of incredible relief and also regret and loss for those folks that we just did not make it happen in time for,” Dievendorf said. “It’s surreal.”
