Brazil High Court Criminalizes Anti-LGBT Discrimination

USA Today reports:

Even as activist groups continue to raise concerns of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s [photo] views toward LGBT people, Brazil’s supreme court voted to criminalize homophobia and transphobia similarly to its laws on racism.

Eight of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Federal Court justices ruled today to include homophobia and transphobia within the country’s laws prohibiting racism — a clause that would legally protect the country’s LGBT community, which has among the highest rates of violent LGBT deaths in the world.

Justice Carmen Lucia in her ruling argued that the LGBT community is treated differently in Brazil’s “discriminatory society,” and as a result, face a higher rate of violence. The country’s laws banning racism were passed in 1989 and allow for possible sentences of up to five years.

Today’s vote puts into law the preliminary vote I reported on last month.