In October 1998, gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered outside Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard met his attackers, twenty-one-yearold Russell Henderson and twenty-two-year-old Aaron McKinney, at a Laramie bar the night of the murder. After telling Shepard that they were gay, the two men lured him out of the bar, and Henderson pistol-whipped him with a .357caliber Magnum. Then the two men drove Shepard to a deserted area, strung him on a roadside fence, and beat him as he begged for his life. Shepard died at the hospital the next day.

The Shepard murder immediately led to increased calls for the enactment of state and federal hate crimes legislation that would increase the penalties for crimes motivated by bias. After Shepard’s murder, the Wyoming legislature voted on several hate crimes bills in February 1999, but all were defeated. A majority of states...