United States of America

In March 2022, the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America amended Section 249 of title 18, United States Code (18 U.S.C. 249) by adopting the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, adding a new subsection (249(a)(5) and (6)) specifying that lynching is a hate crime act.

In September 2022, the U.S. President convened the United We Stand Summit to counter the corrosive effects of hate-fuelled violence on democracy and public safety.  The Summit announced a package of new actions that the federal government, civic, faith, philanthropic, and business leaders will take to address hate-motivated violence and advance national unity, including:

• Federal agencies taking new steps to strengthen resources available to local schools, law enforcement agencies, and cultural institutions, such as museums and libraries, to prevent and respond to hate-fuelled violence.
• Launching Dignity.us, a Citizens' Initiative to address hate-motivated violence in the United States, foster dialogue in communities across the country and identify solutions to address hate-motivated violence. The Citizens' Initiative will be co-ordinated by four former Directors of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Republican and Democratic presidents. The Presidential Centers or Foundations of Presidents Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Gerald Ford will support the initiative.
• New Pluralists, a cross-partisan group of philanthropic and field leaders, is mobilizing $1 billion in new investments to increase support for programmes that build bridges among Americans of different backgrounds to foster unity.
• The Compact to Combat Hate and Extremism has committed to tackle hate-motivated violence and increased their support for local initiatives that heal divides.
• Technology companies, including YouTube, Twitch, Microsoft, and Meta are announcing new actions their platforms are taking to prevent hate-motivated violence. 

In September 2022, responding to increasing incidents of hate, the Attorney General directed all 94 U.S. Attorney's Offices around the country to host at least one hate crimes outreach programme in their district over the coming year. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke and U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York Trini Ross launched the United Against Hate Initiative in Buffalo, New York in October 2022, responding to the tragic racially-motivated mass shooting of ten Black shoppers at the Tops Supermarket there in May 2022. The United Against Hate initiative seeks to directly connect federal, state, and local law enforcement with traditionally marginalized communities in order to build trust and encourage the reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents. As of September 2023, all 94 offices have held at least one programme, with more than 200 events total reaching more than 6,000 participants.

In October 2022, the Department of Justice issued updated Attorney General Guidelines for Victim Assistance. The updated guidelines included a new provision expanding authority to provide assistance to federal crime victims who do not suffer a direct financial or physical injury. The new provision includes an example for victims of hate crime, noting that hate crimes injure not only the direct victim but others in the victim's community.

The Department of Justice's programme on 'Community Based Approaches to Prevent and Address Hate Crimes' provides grant funding that supports community-based organizations and civil rights groups in implementing comprehensive approaches to promote community awareness and preparedness, increase victim reporting, strengthen community resilience, and improve responses to hate crimes. The programme is also designed to develop community-informed model policies, practices, and trainings for law enforcement and prosecution entities regarding how hate crimes are reported, investigated, and prosecuted. In 2022, the Department awarded $3.4 million to eight community-based organizations in California, Colorado, New York, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

In March 2023, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released a 2021 hate crime statistics supplement about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation. This supplement allows for a more complete representation of reported hate crimes in the U.S. for 2021. Nationally, reported hate crime incidents increased 11.6 per cent from 8,120 in 2020 to 9,065 in 2021.

The United States reported the following notable cases for 2022:

In February 2022, a jury found three Georgia men guilty of hate crimes and attempted kidnapping in the pursuit and killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who was jogging on a public road.  In 2020, seeing Mr. Arbery jogging, two of the defendants armed themselves, got into a truck, and chased him through the neighbourhood. They yelled at him, used their truck to cut off his route, and threatened him with guns. The third defendant joined the chase, and all three men tried to prevent Mr. Arbery from leaving after surrounding him. In the ensuing struggle, one of the men shot and killed Mr. Arbery as he attempted to escape. An important part of the trial was proving that the defendants acted because of Mr. Arbery's race. Evidence showed that each defendant held racist beliefs that led them to assume, without reason, that Mr. Arbery was a criminal. Two defendants were sentenced to life in prison and a third was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The men had previously been sentenced to life in prison under state law for murder. Georgia did not have a hate crime law at the time of Mr. Arbery's death but has since enacted a state law.  

In July 2022, a federal grand jury indicted a New York man in connection with the mass shooting at the Tops grocery store on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, New York. The indictment alleges that on 14 May, the man opened fire and shot multiple individuals in and around the Tops grocery store, resulting in the deaths of 10 Black people, as well as injury to three others.  The defendant faces a sentence of up to life in prison or the death penalty.

In August 2022, a Texas man was sentenced to 25 years in prison on hate crime charges for attacking an Asian family he believed was Chinese and therefore responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The man admitted that he entered Sam's Club Warehouse in Midland, Texas, behind an Asian family with young children on 14 March 2020. He had never seen the family before and believed they were Chinese. He followed the family for several minutes because he thought they were "from the country who started spreading that disease around." He found a serrated steak knife in the store, and cut the father in the face. He left the scene, only to retrieve another knife from the store. When he returned, he attacked the family's two young children – then aged 6 and 2 years– who were seated in the front basket of the shopping cart, slashing open the face of the six-year-old child. He also stabbed a Sam's Club employee who intervened. While witnesses held the man down, he yelled "Get out of America!" at the family. The defendant admitted attempting to kill the six-year-old child. He also admitted that he attacked the store employee because they prevented him from killing the child.