The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman by shooting her three times in the head. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter coaxed her into driving to a sparsely populated rural county. In recent years there has been a surge in attacks on the LGBTQ+ community with transgender women of color facing disproportionately high rates of violence. In 2022, the number of gender identity-based hate crimes reported by the FBI increased by 37% compared to the previous year.