The legislation, A.B. 1093, also known as Taneka Talley's Law, was introduced after the death of a Black employee who was stabbed to death in 2006 while on the job of a Dollar Tree store.

The employer's insurer initially denied death benefits for the woman's 8-year-old son. The insurer argued that because the perpetrator said he sought to kill a Black person, there was a personal connection between the attacker and the employee unrelated to Talley's employment.

The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2010, also bars denying coverage because of a personal connection when someone is killed or injured on the job due to their national origin, age, disability, or gender.

This has got to be the oddest bill that was ever created, precisely because of the language of "denying coverage because of a personal connection" when someone is killed or injured on the job due to an archetypal quality such as national origin, age, disability, race or gender.   The employer's insurer has to have come up with the worst and stupidest argument that ever there was, because if someone lashes out against another because of race, religion, or sexual orientation, etc., it is specifically a hate crime against a general type, which embodies no personal relationship whatsoever.

For someone to want to kill or injure a Black person simply because of the fact that that person is Black, constitutes the most impersonal relationship that can exist. There is no personal relationship between someone who lashes out at anyone because of their blackness, or their religious affiliation, or sexual orientation, or other archetypal, general quality. People commit hate crimes because they don't know the person personally at all.  They simply hate Blacks, or Gays, or Jews, or old people, or women, etc.

The individual acting out in violence against a victim in this manner has no personal relationship with the victim, only a bigoted and prejudicial feeling against a generalized "type", which defines it as a completely IMPERSONAL crime.

The employer's argument was innane, because there is nothing personal about a hate crime. Schwarzenegger must have focused upon the general hate crime aspect of this bill, and not tripped on the foolish language of the insurer which called such a crime "personal".

I think an employer needs to screen for bigots in the employment screening process, and weed them out from hire.  If an employer consciously or inadvertently hires a bigot who subsequently commits a hate crime against another employee who is in the course and the scope of employment, then the employer has to assume responsibility for any injuries sustained as a consequence, thereof, under workers' compensation.

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com