A new bill introduced by California State Assembly Member Ash Kalra in San Jose would prohibit police officers from serving if they have used arbitrarily defined “hate speech” or are affiliated with a “hate group.”
The bill, known as the California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act (CLEAR Act), claims to combat “the infiltration of extremists in our law enforcement agencies” and would mandate a background check for all officers who have “exchanged racist and homophobic messages.”
Kalra claims that AB 655 is necessary to prevent “the apparent cooperation, participation, and support of some law enforcement” in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The bill defines hate speech as “as advocating or supporting the denial of constitutional rights of, the genocide of, or violence towards, any group of persons based upon race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.”
Pacific Justice Institute Senior Staff Attorney Matthew McReynolds said this broad and purposefully arbitrary definition could give way for Christians and conservatives to be classified as “hateful” based on the premise of rejecting abortion or supporting Proposition 8 in California, a same-sex amendment that passed in 2008.
read more here: https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/16/california-bill-proposes-removing-cops-who-express-religious-or-conservative-beliefs/
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