FoxNews headline: “Michigan House passes bill that could make using wrong pronouns a felony, fineable up to $10,000”
Reality: HB 4474, which has passed and is on its way to the Senate, amends existing Hate Crime legislation. Here are the first two subsections of the current “Ethnic Intimidation” law (750.147b):
(1) A person is guilty of ethnic intimidation if that person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of that person’s race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, does any of the following:
(a) Causes physical contact with another person.
(b) Damages, destroys, or defaces any real or personal property of another person.
(c) Threatens, by word or act, to do an act described in subdivision (a) or (b), if there is reasonable cause to believe that an act described in subdivision (a) or (b) will occur.
(2) Ethnic intimidation is a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years, or by a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both.
(Current Michigan law)
The bill is a significant expansion on and clarification of that law. Here are the first three subsections (emphasis mine):
(1) A person is guilty of a hate crime if that person maliciously and intentionally does any of the following to an individual based in whole or in part on an actual or perceived characteristic of that individual listed under subsection (2), regardless of the existence of any other motivating factors:
(a) Uses force or violence on another individual.
(b) Causes bodily injury to another individual.
(c) Intimidates another individual.
(d) Damages, destroys, or defaces any real, personal, digital, or online property of another individual without the consent of that individual.
(e) Threatens, by word or act, to do any of the actions described under subdivisions (a) to (d).
(2) The actual or perceived characteristics of another individual referenced under subsection (1) include all of the following:
(a) Race or color.
(b) Religion.
(c) Sex.
(d) Sexual orientation.
(e) Gender identity or expression.
(f) Physical or mental disability.
(g) Age.
(h) Ethnicity.
(i) National origin.
(j) Association or affiliation with an individual or group of individuals in whole or in part based on a characteristic described under subdivisions (a) to (i).
(3) Except as provided in subsection (4), a person who violates subsection (1) is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years, or by a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both.
(Amended law as passed by the Michigan House)
Here are the significant differences:
- Merely touching someone is no longer a crime; contact has to be violent or injurious.
- “Intimidates” is added as an explicit point.
- SOGI, age, and disability status are added as protected classes.
- Allies and comrades are protected. This is a major shift.
Merely using incorrect pronouns does not fall under this bill. At all. There MUST be a component of intimidation. At the end of the bill, after a bunch of boring legal stuff, there’s a definition of intimidation:
(9b) “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. Intimidate does not include constitutionally protected activity or conduct that serves a legitimate purpose.
(Amended law as passed by the Michigan House)
Key points:
- This uses the “reasonable person” litmus, meaning that I can’t merely claim to be intimidated and have that accepted on its face. Not even harassment suffices: I must feel “terrorized, frightened, or threatened”.
- This explicitly excludes someone who is misgendering to make a philosophical point or as a religious act.
The only way using wrong pronouns would fall under this is if it’s part of a deliberate and REPEATED attempt to be threatening. And if someone’s behavior is so egregious that a “reasonable individual” would feel threatened, then that should not be protected speech.
FoxNews is, once again, utterly manipulating the facts to pander to the fears of their viewers.
Additional comments:
FoxNews references a $10,000 fine. This is accurate for a second offense; the $5000 is a maximum for a first offense. But prison time is also an option. So FoxNews is, out of their own privilege and that of their viewers, assuming that prison time is not going to happen and they’ll just pay their way. They’re also highlighting a scenario where someone has been punished under this law and does it again.
The bit protecting allies and the word “perceived” closes loopholes that protected Hate Speech intimidators. Now, for instance, if I’m part of a conversation where a bunch of white people are slurring a Black person behind their back and I stand up for the absent person, I can push for charges if those white people start attacking me for defending them.