But no person may (legally) be physically assaulted anyway. And every state has in addition to forty or so kinds of assault a hate crimes law saying more or less what the federal bill will say. Why not just add racial/ethnic motivation as an aggravating factor to be considered during sentencing? I think this is already true in some states.

As to freedom of expression, it appears to me that many of the lawmakers who introduce hate crime legislation ( usually with considerable fanfare) are pandering to some minority or perhaps to uninformed dogooders in general by appearing to ignore the constitutional protection of speech (even when in bad taste)

At North Carolina State U. two student who wrote hate messages in an area filled with other graffitti were threatened with all sorts of things including expulsion and the entire university system went into code red mode to create new rukles forbidding forms of speech. It was clear that minorities wanted blood. It seemed to be not so much about equal protection as about special protection and special punishment for the use of forbidden words.

This whole thing looks to me like legislators trying to make political hay by pretending to do something.