Minorities Attack Ruling on Hate Crime Law : Justice system: Jews, blacks and gays criticize the Supreme Court decision on acts that ‘create terror in the hearts of people.’ Some cite threats to their own safety.

Jewish leaders and representatives of the NAACP and a gay-and-lesbian rights group in Ventura County on Monday denounced a U. S. Supreme Court decision that cast doubt on the constitutionality of state and local “hate crime” laws.

In a unanimous decision, the justices struck down a St. Paul, Minn., ordinance banning cross burning, swastika displays and related expressions of racial bias, declaring that the local law violated the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment.

Under California law, individuals who display hate symbols such as swastikas on someone else’s property or damage property “for the purpose of terrorizing” others are subject to misdemeanor penalties, including imprisonment for up to three years and fines up to $10,000.

The state attorney general’s office in Sacramento said it had no immediate comment on whether the Supreme Court decision would affect the California law.

“We’ve not fully analyzed the opinion,” said Dave Puglia, the attorney general’s press secretary.

As a practical matter, the court left officials with ample authority to punish most hate crimes, such as arson, trespass or criminal damage to property.

“I’m not pleased with the ruling at all,” said Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks, whose synagogue has been the target of hate crimes. “When you create a symbolic expression of hate and other people’s lives are negatively impacted, you’ve crossed over the line.”

Greenbaum said he parted with the high court on the issue of the Constitution’s free-speech protections.

“It’s not simply freedom of speech,” he said. “It’s freedom of speech that affects people.

“Nazis marching down streets, crosses burned in the fields, these are not expressions without consequences to people. They create terror in the hearts of people.”

Rabbi Shimon Paskow of Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, another target of hate graffiti, called the high court decision “stupid” and declared that “there are limits to everything.”

Paskow said he was apprehensive that the decision might serve to encourage hate crimes.

“It will give people the idea they can do whatever they want to do and get away with it,” he said.

Rabbi Michael Berk of Temple Beth Torah in Ventura, another target of vandals, said he, too, was concerned about the decision.

“I’m not sure I see this as a First Amendment issue,” he said. “These are hate crimes meant to terrorize. They are associated with acts of violence like hangings and gas chambers.”

John R. Hatcher III, president of the Ventura County chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said the decision so upset him when he heard it on the radio Monday morning that he changed stations while it was still being described.

“I feel that the Supreme Court is hiding behind the First Amendment and supporting racism across the country by this decision,” he said.

Hatcher recalled that he has been the target of numerous hate crimes, including graffiti scrawled on his post office box in Oxnard.

“That’s why the riots in Los Angeles happened, because people don’t trust this justice system,” he said. “Justice is so blind it doesn’t see the truth.”

Claire Connelly, president of the Gay and Lesbian Resource Center of Ventura County, said the decision was ill-timed “when hate crimes are at an all-time high.”

She said her Camarillo-based group receives “10 to 15 hate calls a month. We’ve gotten threats to blow up the center. There have been murder threats against me.”

In this framework, she said, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has been lobbying Congress to pass a federal hate crime statute.

Several Ventura County city attorneys said their city councils had passed no hate crime laws. Instead, they said, the cities relied upon the state to legislate in this area. Kevin McGee, Ventura County’s assistant chief deputy district attorney, also said there were no hate crime laws on the county books.

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