According to FBI statistics, hate crimes rose 17% in the U.S. in 2017. Amongst the motivations for hate crimes tracked by the FBI are “race/ethnicity/ancestry bias”, “religious bias”, “sexual orientation bias”, “disability bias” and “gender bias.”
The FBI does not similarly document the number of false allegations of hate crimes. Recent events, however, have shown that hate hoaxes are real.
On January 29, 2019, actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, claimed to have been attacked in Chicago by two masked men. According to Smollett, the two men yelled racist and homophobic slurs, wrapped a rope around his neck, physically assaulted him and poured a substance over him. The media, politicians and entertainers were quick to condemn the incident as a hate crime. Paradoxically, what started as a police investigation of a hate crime, quickly became an investigation of a hate hoax. On February 20, 2019, Smollett was formally charged with filing a false police report.
In 2017, the Jackson, Michigan home of Nikki Joly, a prominent member of the local LGBTQ community, was burned to the ground. The FBI initially regarded the incident as a hate crime. A Jackson newspaper named Joly its 2018 Citizen of the Year. After a lengthy investigation, Joly was surprisingly charged in 2018 with first degree arson in burning his own home.
Just as in society as a whole, hateful conduct continues to be an unfortunate reality in the workplace. Indeed, most employers understand their legal obligations to take reasonable measures to prevent such conduct and to take prompt remedial action in response to such conduct. Recent hate hoaxes nevertheless underscore three important lessons in exercising these legal obligations.
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