SPONSORS

Send an email or letter to the sponsors of HB14.

• Send a message to the co-sponsors of the HB 14 and every member of the House Judiciary Committee that you oppose this bill.
  • Example Message:
    • Dear [sponsor],

While supporting real protection and equitable treatment of law enforcement and public safety working in Kentucky, I write to register my opposition to HB 14, the “Blue Lives Matter” bill currently under consideration by the state House. This bill does nothing to protect law enforcement, undermines existing hate crimes laws by introducing a constitutionally unsound protection for a limited set of occupations, and invites abuse by overzealous prosecutors who could use the provisions of the proposed law to convert minor offenses into felonies and to prosecute Kentucky citizens for ordinary, constitutionally protected acts of protest, converting such activity into felony intimidation. Support for this law is transparently political, useless or worse than useless in supporting the real issues faced by law enforcement, and all too likely to be struck down in legal challenges if used.

• Send a message to your own representative in the Kentucky State Legislature (use this link http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Find%20Your%20Legislator/Find%20Your%20Legislator.html) urging him or her to speak out in opposition.
  • Example Message:
    • Dear Representative _____________,

Writing as a constituent, I urge you to speak out in opposition to the “Blue Lives Matter” bill (HB 14) currently under consideration. This bill promises to make law enforcement officers safer, but actually undermines existing hate crimes laws by including a small set of occupations and excluding others--a clear violation of long established constitutional principles of equal protection under the law. Worse, hate crimes laws were not passed because attacks motivated by bias are particularly bad in individual terms, but because they constitute a terroristic attack on whole communities, discouraging exercise of basic civil rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, and voting. No one is suggesting that police officers are being discouraged from voting by the extremely rare attacks on law enforcement as such. All such attacks are horrible crimes, which should be prosecuted, and which are already subject to enhanced penalties in Kentucky, but they are not hate crimes in the sense described above. Even worse, if this law is used the way similar legislation already passed in Louisiana is being used, it will lead to the classification of minor crimes such as “resisting arrest”--for example reflexively throwing up your hands to protect your eyes when pepper sprayed--as felony hate crimes. It could also in the worst case be used to charge Kentuckians engaged in constitutionally protected protest with intimidation of police officers as a specially protected class. This makes no sense, is liable to expensive constitutional challenge, and has an outsized danger of being abused. I urge you to vote against this regressive legislation, and to speak out strongly and publicly against it.