The law prohibits using a victim’s sexuality or gender identity as justification for criminal action.

The law prohibits using a victim’s sexuality or gender identity as justification for criminal action.

Michigan has outlawed the so-called gay and trans panic defense, which allows criminal defense attorneys to use a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a defense argument.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed House Bill 4718 into law Tuesday. The legislation states that an individual’s “actual or perceived sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” is not admissible in a criminal trial to “demonstrate reasonable provocation,” “show that an act was committed in a heat of passion” or “support a defense of reduced mental capacity.”

In a statement shared on Tuesday, the governor’s office said the bill “significantly expands” protections for the LGBTQ community “by protecting them from violent acts of discrimination, prejudice, and hate crimes.”

  • Flying Squid
    145•1 month ago

    Good, because that is fucking bullshit. Imagine if there was a “black panic defense” where someone claimed that they lost control violently because a black person made a pass at them?

    • @[email protected]English
      47•1 month ago

      Or even better(?) a “white panic defence” for non-whites (hold for crowd’s audible gasp). The fact someone came up with that garbage is yet another example of how absurd it is getting over there.

      • Flying Squid
        38•1 month ago

        This one isn’t recent. This particular “defense” goes back to the 1960s and it’s based on “science” from the 1920s.

    • FuglyDuckEnglish
      27•1 month ago

      That’s where they got the “xyz panic defense” from!

      “The Big Scary Black Man™️ got on the elevator with me! I had to mace him because he said HeLlO”

      (Yeah. That was my security guard. He was in uniform, starting his shift and you just maxed him for starting his rounds.)(fortunately it was that cheap pink pepper spray that- for the record- can’t stop any one for shit. It’s just… irritating.)

    • @essell
      13•1 month ago

      I think I’m seen American police do that, though that could just be the way its reported

      • Flying Squid
        8•1 month ago

        Very few black people in America are making passes at cops. At least not when they know they’re cops.

        • @[email protected]English
          9•1 month ago

          The comparison is that the cops are using something about the person to be an excuse for violently panicking. Not literally the same thing, but the same kind of fear based on who the person is.

    • @lanolinoilEnglish
      5•1 month ago

      I bet they did used to use that defense

      • Flying Squid
        2•1 month ago

        Not successfully enough for it to become a known phrase.

    • Doug HollandEnglish
      2•1 month ago

      It’s not about making a pass, but the corollary is all the cops claiming “excited delirium” is what kills their victims.