A bill moving through the Democrat-controlled Michigan State Legislature would make it easier for prosecutors to bring felonious “hate crime” charges against dissident speech.
The possible implications for preachers, school administrators, teachers, parents, politicians, and citizen activists have alarmed conservatives concerned about the effect the bill may have on free speech.
The proposed legislation, HB 4474, would amend the state’s Ethnic Intimidation Act of 1988 in order to consider it a hate crime if a person is accused of causing “severe mental anguish” to another individual by means of perceived verbal intimidation or harassment.
The amendment defines the words intimidate or harass as a “willful course of conduct, involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested…”…