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Bid to include unborn children under hate crimes law derails vote
BY LESLIE REED
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
LINCOLN - A legislative effort to preserve Nebraska's hate crimes law got derailed Wednesday by a Lincoln lawmaker's efforts to include unborn children under its protection.
State Sen. Mike Foley of Lincoln is emerging as one of the Legislature's most vocal abortion opponents. He raised the abortion-related issue one day after he won first-round passage of another abortion-related bill.
His tactic prompted another lawmaker to object that Foley injects abortion politics into too many issues.
"I've reached the saturation point," said Sen. Pat Bourne of Omaha. "Not everything is pro-life or pro-choice."
Foley denied that he was raising abortion at every opportunity.
"I'm not trying to dominate the session," he said. "But it comes up. It is one of the issues of the day. You don't need to run from it."
Since 1997, Nebraska has had a law allowing judges to impose stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, age or disability.
But the hate crime law is in jeopardy because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that juries, not judges, should decide whether a crime contains factors warranting harsher punishment.
State Sen. Kermit Brashear of Omaha introduced Legislative Bill 270 last year to fix the hate crimes law. During debate Wednesday, he also hoped to include legislation to carry out Nebraska's victims' rights amendment, passed by voters in 1996 but never implemented by the Legislature.
But Foley's maneuver meant Brashear couldn't bring the measure to a vote Wednesday morning. It's not known when the hate crimes bill will return to the agenda.
Sen. Ray Mossey of Sarpy County, a former Omaha police officer, said the hate crimes law change is needed.
He told of anti-Semitic vandalism of an Omaha synagogue and a cross-burning at the home of a northwest Omaha family.
"The look on that family's face, on their children's faces, when that cross burned on their front yard," Mossey said. "That crime would not have been committed if that family had not been African-American. It's not right."
Foley said he opposes the hate crimes law because it attempts to say some crimes are "extra wrong" because of what the perpetrator might have been thinking.
But Foley said he would suppress those objections if other lawmakers would accept his "reasonable offer" to include unborn children in the hate crimes law.
Brashear rejected the offer. He said his bill was intended only to remedy problems with existing laws, not to raise new issues.
