From KUT:
Since 2007, Houston Democratic State Rep. Garnet Coleman – and others – have tried in vain to get just five words into Texas’ hate crimes law: “or gender identity or expression.”
Victims of crime motivated by race, gender, sexual orientation and religion have been protected by the state’s law, which was spurred by the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper.
State lawmakers passed a bill in 2001, but protection based on gender identity has been absent in the law’s nearly 20-year lifespan.
That’s not for lack of trying on Coleman’s part.
