The House of Representatives has approved the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. Or, as some call it, LLEHCA. Or, as still others call it, a big, fat invitation to constitutional challenge.

The question is: can this law survive the inevitable courtroom battle?

The legislation approved by a 249-175 vote, in brief, puts a federal hook into any violent felony that "is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, or is a violation of the State, local, or Tribal hate crime laws."

Or, as House Republicans bluntly put in their dissenting views at the House Judiciary Committee: "criminals who kill a homosexual, transvestite or transsexual will be punished more harshly than criminals who kill a police officer, a member of the military, a child, a senior citizen, or any other person." Note the GOP's not-so subtle invidious comparison between the new protected class -- homosexual, transvestite or transsexual -- and the implicitly innocent cops, soldiers and little old ladies left out in the cold.

How about the transvestite cop and the homosexual senior citizen, Suits & Sentences wants to know?

Suits & Sentences understands the politics of the legislation. It is a proxy, a signifier of support for certain populations. Democrats: If you vote against hate crimes bill, you are voting to leave the vulnerable population exposed to attack. Republicans: If you vote for hate crimes bill, you love the gays more than you love our kind of people.

Republicans, in their dissenting views, do raise several potential constitutional infirmities. Some, Suits & Sentences isn't so sure about. For instance, the GOP skeptics raise questions about whether First Amendment problems arise from the possibility that "religious leaders or members of religious groups could be prosecuted criminally based on their speech or protected activities." The skeptics suggest that conspiracy or incitement charges might be leveled. This seems a stretch, an effort to rally religious right opposition to the bill.

But how about attacking the law on the grounds that it overreaches the congressional powers permitted under the Interstate Commerce Clause? Republicans note that the Supreme Court, in the 2000 case United States v. Morrison, struck down provisions of the Violence Against Women Act on those very grounds.

"The Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local," then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the 5-4 majority.

Two of the justices in that majority, Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor, have since been replaced by two other conservatives, John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito, who are presumably likely to hold similarly restrictive views.

So is this where the next line of attack opens? And how will that happen: do we wait for a prosecution under the new law so it is challenged as applied, or can there be a facial challenge to the language of the law itself? And on whose behalf?