After an 18-8 bipartisan vote in the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, the measure's sponsor, Rep. Josh Shapiro (D., Montgomery), predicted approval by the full House early next year. The bill may face a tougher test in the Republican-controlled state Senate.

"It's critical that we provide the protections of laws in this commonwealth to all - particularly those who are targeted with hate-inspired violence," Shapiro said.

An opponent of the bill, Rep. Tim Krieger (R., Westmoreland), said justice was "supposed to be blind" and not recognize the status of the victim or the accused. The bill says "some people are more equal than others," he asserted.

Rep. Bryan Lentz (D., Delaware), a former prosecutor and now a congressional candidate, said the bill's added protections were urgently needed. "In too many instances for me to recount, because of their sexual identity, people have been victims of violence," Lentz said. "We as a legislature need to do something about it."

In 2002, civil-rights and gay-rights activists muscled the hate-crimes expansion provision through a Republican-controlled legislature by resorting to a controversial but oft-used strategy: attaching the language to an unrelated, less controversial bill.

It was a gamble.

Five years later, Commonwealth Court overturned that section of the law. The court acted in response to a suit brought by conservative activists charged with hate crimes in 2004 after they picketed a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, preaching that homosexuality is a sin.

In their lawsuit, Repent America members argued that the 2002 amendment had been inserted into a completely unrelated bill dealing with penalties for crimes involving the destruction of farm crops.

Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, a bill cannot be changed to alter its original purpose and intent.

In its 2007 decision, Commonwealth Court said that while it supported the protection goals of the language added to the hate-crimes law, it agreed with the plaintiffs that the bill's route to passage was unconstitutional.

After the court ruling, Gov. Rendell urged the legislature to swiftly reinstate the law.

Today, Pennsylvania is one of just six states without a hate-crimes provision covering crimes based on a victim's sexual orientation. The absence of those explicit protections has "inhibited prosecutions of hate crimes in Pennsylvania," Stephen Glassman, chairman of the state Human Relations Commission, said yesterday.

"Prosecutors are not willing to bring cases forward in the face of the law being struck down," said Glassman, the first openly gay person appointed to a statewide commission in Pennsylvania.

Shapiro said his bill paralleled the federal hate-crimes law, known as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law last month.

Both bills are needed, Shapiro said, because the majority of hate crimes committed are prosecuted as state crimes, not federal offenses.