TALLAHASSEE – After incidents comparable to antisemitic messages being projected on buildings in Jacksonville, lawmakers Thursday known as for passing a measure that will outline sure acts as hate crimes and improve legal penalties.
Under the invoice (HB 269), individuals who take actions comparable to defacing or damaging non secular cemeteries, projecting photographs of spiritual “animus” on property with out permission or harassing others due to religious-based clothes may very well be charged with third-degree felonies.
“I will not stand here and do nothing,” Rep. Mike Caruso, a Delray Beach Republican who’s sponsoring the invoice, mentioned throughout a news convention. “I will not be complacent, and I will not sit around. For, with that attitude, are we just going to wait for these haters to start breaking the glass windows and storefronts of Jewish store owners again, like they did in the past, before we wake up?”
The laws, filed this month, follows a collection of antisemitic incidents within the state. As an instance, an antisemitic message was projected on the skin of the TIAA Bank Field soccer stadium in Jacksonville. Also, antisemitic banners have been hung from interstate overpasses, and antisemitic flyers have been distributed in Jewish communities in South Florida.
Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who’s Jewish, mentioned hate speech and hate crimes have made many Jewish folks in Florida really feel unsafe.
“The reason we must speak is that silence in the face of evil is evil itself,” Fine mentioned. “What we are doing here today is we are saying in the Florida House, that there is no room for this.”
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