The US senate has passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act by a vote of 94-1, with Senator Josh Hawley being the only dissenting vote.
The bill describes what it calls COVID-19-related hate crimes as those motivated by the victim's perceived ethnicity and the actual or perceived relationship to the spread of the coronavirus of any person because of that characteristic.
The sponsors of the bill have said the measure is designed to address instances of attacks primarily against Asian-Americans by expediting the review of COVID-19-related hate crimes within the Justice Department.
