An anti-lynching bill passed by the House, a measure with seemingly broad public appeal, needs to clarify what constitutes the crime, says Sen. Rand Paul.
“There has to be some give-and-take in order to try to make the language the best we can get,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters on Wednesday in explaining why he’s blocking consideration of the bill. “We want the bill to be stronger. We think that lynching is an awful thing that should be roundly condemned and should be universally condemned.”
A Senate anti-lynching measure has previously been pushed by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California and Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, the chamber’s only black members. The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act passed the Senate in June 2018, but like all remaining bills died at the conclusion of the last Congress.
The House did not immediately take up the anti-lynching bill for more than a year after Democrats took power. The House bill passed on Feb. 26 by a 410-4 vote. It included a provision to make lynching a federal crime.
The bill by Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, went to the Senate with the expectation it would be voted on by unanimous consent without a committee hearing or amendments.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and the Senate adjourned on Feb. 27, sans a vote on the anti-lynching measure. After the Senate reconvened in April, Paul blocked the House anti-lynching bill. He was later accused by civil rights activists and Rush of having issues with Emmet Till’s name being on the measure. Till, 14, was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store.
But Paul said Wednesday he has a different problem with the House bill. It might “conflate lesser crimes with lynching,” he said Wednesday, including bruises or other minor wounds that might have emerged from a fight between two people.
“Under the statute as written, bruises could be considered lynching. That’s a problem, to put someone in jail for 10 years for some kind of altercation. And it also I think demeans how horrible lynching actually was,” Paul said.
In theory, the Senate could take up the House-passed bill, pass it, and send it to the White House for President Trump’s signature. However, that would eat into precious floor time in an election year. The bill’s consideration comes as Congress wrestles with other racially-sensitive topics, such as federal legislation to cover police practices in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in police custody when a white officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
