By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent
Washington has a new hate-crime law, which prohibits insurance companies from canceling or refusing to renew coverage on targets of bias attacks.
House Bill 1128 was signed by Gov. Gary Locke in Olympia on May 7. “By signing this bill into law, we are taking proactive steps to make sure this type of discrimination doesn’t happen in Washington state,” Gov. Locke said in a written statement.
A joint effort of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and the Pacific Northwest regional office of the Anti-Defamation League, HB 1128 was endorsed by a coalition of area groups that included Seattle’s Idriss Mosque, the Washington Association of Churches, the Lutheran Public Policy Office of Washington, the Washington State Catholic Conference and the Washington chapter of the National Organization of Women. Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler strongly supported the bill, which passed both houses in unanimous votes last month.
“This bill stands out as really a shining light for the right thing to do, and this legislature decided to do it unanimously,” said Rep. Shay Schual-Berke (D-33), the House version’s chief sponsor, just before the signing ceremony in the governor’s office.
Sen. Don Benton (R-17), lead supporter of HB 1128’s companion bill in the Senate, SB 5193, declared, “I’m proud of my involvement with the legislation: Making sure victims of hate crimes don’t lose their insurance is the right thing to do!”
The new law provides relief to policyholders who once feared losing their coverage if they filed for damages resulting from bias attacks, and corresponds to measures passed in California in 2001 and Illinois in 2002. The California legislation was in response to the non-renewal of insurance coverage on Congregation B’nai Israel, a Sacramento synagogue damaged in a hate-motivated arson incident in June 1999.
While the California law applies to the insurance policies on religious, educational and other nonprofit organizations, it does not address changes in coverage on property owned by individuals. By contrast, the Illinois and Washington statutes include property owned by individuals as well as institutions.
Remy Trupin, government affairs director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, shepherded HB 1128 and SB 5193 through the legislative process by finding supporters in the state capital. When working on legislation “essentially coming from the Jewish community,” Trupin explained, “you have to make it as universal as possible…and you have to find champions [among the legislators] who are sort of unexpected.”
The ADL built a coalition of community support, contributed legal expertise and provided “reality-based feedback” on the crafting of the legislation, according to Diane Baer, chair of the ADL Pacific Northwest Region’s government affairs committee. “In terms of the practical application of the bill, we knew that with certain wording, it wouldn’t be effective.”
For example, insurance industry advocates wanted to require that cases of “malicious harassment” — the legal term for a hate crime — be officially labeled as such by law enforcement, so that policyholders would be deterred from portraying ordinary vandalism incidents as hate-motivated in order to benefit from HB 1128’s protection. As police investigations may take as long as 18 months, bill supporters opposed this requirement, maintaining that if many fraudulent claims are filed, the law can be amended. The insurers relented.
Brian Goldberg, outgoing executive director of the ADL Pacific Northwest Region, said recently that his office became concerned about insurance coverage when Jewish organizations in the Northwest began calling to complain about terrorism riders being attached to their policies following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Because some hate crimes could be construed as “domestic terrorism,” he explained, “we looked at the law and determined that there were protections against rate increases, but there was no protection from an insurance company just canceling or not renewing coverage on an institution or an individual because they had been a victim of a hate crime. We found this loophole in the Washington state law and decided to be proactive.”
Goldberg said the ADL approached Hisham Farajallah, director of Seattle’s Idriss Mosque, about supporting the bill. Farajallah presented it to the Muslim community, who “got behind it and were very, very active in getting their members to call their legislators and to put pressure on and to really be vocal and public in support of this legislation,” Goldberg said.