Tennessee has become the first state in the South with a hate crime statute protecting transgender individuals.

State Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued an opinion Feb. 8 in response to a question posed by Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville.

"A defendant who targets a person for a crime because that person is transgender has targeted the person because of his or her gender within the meaning" of the current state law that outlines sentence enhancements for hate crimes, Slatery wrote.

Tennessee does not have an explicit hate crime charge, though the General Assembly in 2000 added a hate crime factor to judges' sentencing rules for crimes targeting a person based on race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or gender.

Slatery's decision affirms that transgender individuals should be covered under the existing law, but must still be tested in court in a case involving bias against a transgender victim.

Stewart sought clarification from Slatery on whether transgender people would be covered after a discussion last year in a Senate committee regarding a bill filed by Sen. Sara Kyle, D-Memphis, to add gender identity and expression to Tennessee's hate crime sentencing law.

The bill failed to move but raised the question about whether transgender individuals are already included under the gender protection.

Stewart said that in light of the attorney general's opinion, he would take a wait-and-see approach before suggesting that the legislature alter the statute or develop an explicit hate crime charge.

"Let's see how the courts actually utilize the law in practice and let's see how much protection it provides," Stewart said.

Authorities in Cookeville in 2016 said they would not investigate as a hate crime a case that involved a transgender woman's truck being set on fire after someone wrote "Trump" on the vehicle's hood.

The Putnam County Sheriff's Office said at the time that the vandalism did "not fit the criteria of a hate crime."

Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ rights advocacy organization, said they worked with Stewart to seek the opinion.

"What we as a community were all telling ourselves was nothing could be done in Tennessee as far as a penalty enhancement, if the perpetrator were even caught," Sanders, said of the 2016 case.

He said he is pleased with Slatery's ruling and is hopeful that it will be applied as future cases involving transgender victims move forward with sentencing.

In addition to hate crime sentencing enhancement, in Tennessee, certain hate crimes can be prosecuted as a felony under the Civil Rights Intimidation Act, a statute violation that can be difficult to prove.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.

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