The Matthew Shepard Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act or LLEHCPA), is a recently passed bill in the United States Congress that would expand the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
The bill would also:
* remove the current prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally-protected activity, like voting or going to school;
* give federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue;
* provide $10 million in funding for 2008 and 2009 to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes;
* require the FBI to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people (statistics for the other groups are already tracked).[
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