Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed Thursday he would support hate-crime laws – and transgender and anti-Muslim crime would be a priority, The Wall Street Journal reported.
At a hate-crimes summit, which included some of Sessions' most outspoken critics, the Journal reported, the attorney general focused his remarks on the protection of individual rights, citing a case against a Mississippi man who last month was sentenced to 49 years in prison for murdering a transgender woman – the first case prosecuted under the 2009 law involving gender identity.
He also said he had personally met with staffers to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of other transgender murders.
"We have, and will continue to, enforce hate-crime law aggressively and appropriately where transgender individuals are victims," he said, the Journal reported.
"No person should have to fear being attacked because of who they are, what they believe, or how they worship," he added.
The hate-crimes summit coincided with the release of a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey in which U.S. residents described an average of 250,000 hate crimes a year from 2004 to 2015. Less than half were reported to police.
The Journal reported the latest FBI statistics in 2015 showed hate crime was up 7 percent from the previous year, partly due to a 67 percent surge in anti-Muslim incidents.
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