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Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

American hate crime legislation

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 11, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a landmark United States federal law, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010. Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., both in 1998, the measure expands the 1968 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” is american hate crime legislation. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Matthew, Shepard and James, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009, 2010, 1998, 1968—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Matthew, Shepard and James is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american hate crime legislation” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010, 1998 and 1968.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.