Bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depressive illness or manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by wide mood swings from high (manic) to low (depressed). Periods of high or irritable mood are called manic episodes.
James Byrd, Jr. was not engaged in a federally-protected activity when he was lynched and killed. The Matthew Shepard Act expanded the 1969 Federal Hate Crime Law to cover these and other types of brutal murders.
Washington and Oregon were the first states to pass hate crime legislation in. 1981.10 To date, only five states have failed to enact any type of hate crime law: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming.11 State laws, however, vary widely in terms of the breadth of the protection and who is covered.