1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to support an amendment to the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act that would create a separate federal cause of action for lynching with life imprisonment as a potential penalty. This change is necessary to address a disturbing pattern of bias-motivated killings being misclassified as suicides, particularly in cases involving Black transgender women in the South. A recent report by JULIAN, a social justice organization founded by Jill Collen Jefferson, documents more than 150 deaths across seven Southern states between 2000 and 2025. More than 50 of these cases involve transgender women. Jefferson's investigation reveals systemic investigative failures including unsecured crime scenes, witnesses not interviewed for days, and cause of death determinations made before investigators speak to anyone present. In the case of Willie Andrew Jones Jr., authorities ruled the death a suicide within 40 minutes of arriving on the scene, while witnesses in the house were not interviewed until four days later. You can read more about this investigation at https://www.advocate.com/news/crime/black-trans-women-modern-lynching. This mirrors the historical practice documented by journalist Ida B. Wells during Reconstruction, when lynchings were routinely recorded as suicides to shield perpetrators. The structural problem is clear: families must first overturn an official classification before they can argue bias, a nearly impossible bar when investigative failures produce the initial classification. Jefferson describes presenting evidence to district attorneys showing deaths were not suicides, only to have them refuse to press charges. While FBI Crime Data Explorer statistics show 2,726 anti-transgender hate crime incidents nationwide from January 2000 through February 2026, these numbers are incomplete due to voluntary reporting. The current framework fails to capture the full scope of bias-motivated violence. Creating a separate federal cause of action with independent federal prosecutors would remove these cases from local authorities who have demonstrated unwillingness or inability to investigate properly. This amendment would provide meaningful accountability and justice for victims and their families.