A hate crime ordinance was amended and passed unanimously last Thursday by the City Council of Kansas City. The amended ordinance adds sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes for the first time. This makes the LGBTQ community a protected class in the city of Kansas City.
Additionally, the City Council of Kansas City repealed Section 1-17 of the original ordinance “to establish a sentence enhancement for certain municipal offenses.”
Some of these enhancements include identifying “the right of every person, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability to be secure and protected from fear, intimidation, harassment, and physical harm caused by the activities of individuals and groups,” reads the ordinance.
The Council also identified goals to ensure the Kansas City Police Department “has the resources available for the prosecution” of hate offenses in the Kansas City Municipal Division of the Circuit Court “so hate-motivated offenses can be better deterred and penalized.”
This would increase arrests, and bolster police power in the city, which isn’t safe for everyone.
Consequentially, power of law enforcement has a history of inciting hate crimes against the LGBTQ community and people of color. To expand on this, “law enforcement violence constitute[s] just some of the many ways in which LGBTQ+ people are harmed by those supposedly tasked with perpetuating justice. Over-policing and criminal justice system discrimination also disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ people — particularly LGBTQ+ people of color, who endure cross-cutting discrimination that has myriad unjust consequences,” says The Legal Defense Fund.
Contrarily, the LGBTQ Commission believes the new hate crime ordinance will protect people through its enhanced penalties.
Enhanced penalties include an additional 60 days on top of offenders’ original sentence was edited into the ordinance. The legislation is the City Council’s “first break-through legislative action against anti-LGBTQ measures” this year.
Councilwoman Andrea Bough’s office said the ordinance represents a collective effort from the city of Kansas City “to identify a protection that was lacking” in ordinances, which left city agencies without adequate resources to protect people from “crimes perpetrated against them based solely on who they are.”
“Kansas City has a well-established commitment to equity, inclusion and diversity. We always strive to continue to make Kansas City welcoming to all. That does not end with one ordinance or one act of the body but is a continuing commitment,” Bough told GLAAD in an email statement. “This ordinance will provide additional means for our law enforcement and prosecutors to carry out Kansas City’s message that all are welcome and hate has no place in this city.”
The Kansas City Police Department’s Bias Incident Report reported 24 bias-motivated offenses in 2022 and 23 bias-motivated offenses in 2023, according to the ordinance. This doesn’t account for any unreported hate-motivated crimes.
The LGBTQ+ Commission of Kansas City wrote a letter in August stating that:
“We cannot go the way of other cities and wait for something so horrendous to happen for us to finally move on this issue.
“It’s time for the city of Kansas City to pass a hate crimes ordinance that not only defines a hate crime, but gives prosecutors the tools to enforce municipal law to protect victims of hate crimes. Defining it and enforcing it is the only way we’ll eradicate hate crimes in the Kansas City community.”
Unfortunately, something “horrendous” did happen shortly before the ordinance’s passing. Amber Minor, a 40-year-old Black trans woman, was shot and killed in Raytown, a suburb of Kansas City, on Christmas Eve. Following her death, numerous Kansas City news outlets misgendered and deadnamed Minor originating with the initial police report from the Raytown Police Department. Before the ordinance’s passing, Minor’s murder wouldn’t have had the protections to be classified as a hate crime.
Justice Horn, Chair of the LGBTQ+ Commission of Kansas City and a GLAAD Media Institute Alum, said Minor’s murder comes with other recent crimes against the LGBTQ community.
“Two weeks ago, someone ripped a pride flag off of a business in the City Market. A week ago, someone vandalized a queer owned and operated business in the West Bottoms—and on Christmas Eve, someone senselessly killed a Black Trans woman named Amber Minor. A hate crime ordinance was needed in Kansas City,” Horn told GLAAD in an email, “If we’re not at the table advocating for policy, we’re on the menu. We can’t let people legislate our lives, we must mobilize and organize as a community.”
In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign reported at least 31 transgender and gender non-conforming people were killed by violence. 84% were people of color, and 48% were Black trans women. The number is likely an undercount as almost half of the victims were misgendered or dead named by authorities or the press.
Kansas City’s hate crime ordinance has been a work in progress says Commission members.
Back in October, Álvaro Ontiveros Aguilar, an advisor to the city on the LGBTQ Commission of Kansas City and GLAAD Media Institute Alum, told GLAAD that his biggest concern overall for LGBTQ equality in Kansas City and Missouri is having legislative protection for his community.
“I want to express my thanks personally to the KC City Council for working so diligently,” Ontiveros Aguilar told GLAAD in a statement. “[A]s an LGBTQ+ Kansas Citian, it’s comforting to know that our city council takes our safety and concerns seriously, particularly leading into an election year that is sure to be tense. We’re seeing legislative agendas that are outright hostile to LGBTQ+ people, particularly here in Missouri so to have allies in our council is very reassuring.”
However, not everyone agrees with the measures by people in power.
In a recent April 2024 article for The Kansas City Defender, Nasir Montalvo and Lynnie Holl write how “hate crimes” do the opposite of their supposed aim. “At the base-level, [Horn and Kansas City Council] fail to recognize how policing and criminalization disproportionately impacts Black community–specifically in Missouri. In fact, a report on hate crimes (conducted by the Movement Advancement Project in 2021) showed that Black people constituted 11% of the population in Missouri, but nearly 33% of federal law enforcement-reported hate crimes listed Black offenders,” write Montalvo and Holl.
Editorial note: This article was updated to reflect pushback on hate crime laws by Kansas City activists, journalists and citizens.