You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Louisiana Passes “Blue Lives Matter” Law

HeadlineMay 27, 2016

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has signed a so-called Blue Lives Matter law, which expands the state’s hate crimes statute to add police officers, as well as firefighters and EMS personnel, to the list. The new law is the first of its kind in the country. Its signing sparked outrage by civil rights groups. Louisiana NAACP President Ernest Johnson said, “Hate crimes law is based upon a history of discrimination against certain groups of people, and a bill like this just tries to water down that reality, because there is not a history of discrimination against police and firefighters.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top