Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised Thursday that the Department of Justice will continue to prosecute hate crimes against transgender people.
Speaking a hate crime summit Thursday morning in Washington, Sessions said he met with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to discuss murders of transgender people, and promised more action against them.
“We have and will continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively and appropriately where transgendered individuals are victims,” Sessions said.
Sessions said he has directed the Civil Rights Division to work with both U.S. attorney’s offices and the FBI “to identify ways the department can support the state and local law enforcement authorities investigating these incidents and to determine whether federal action would be appropriate.”
Sessions specifically mentioned Joshua Brandon Vallum, who was sentenced last month to 49 years in prison for assaulting and murdering Mercedes Williamson.
“This is the first case prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving the murder of a transgender person,” Sessions said.
Vallum was sentenced in May after he pleaded guilty last year to the 2015 assault and murder of 17-year-old Williamson, a transgender girl whom he said he once dated.
The charges brought against Vallum under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act were done so by former Civil Rights Division Head Vanita Gupta.
Sessions’ speech Thursday came on the heels of new federal data showing a majority of hate crimes go unreported to police.
The Human Rights Campaign has reported that 2017 has seen at least 14 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other means. There were at least 22 deaths of transgender people in 2016, advocates say.
