Virginia's existing anti-discrimination laws to add protections on the bases of gender identity, sexual orientation, and veteran's status. An additional civil rights bill signed by Northam in 2020 established a process for the removal of racially exclusionary housing covenants from property deeds in Virginia; these covenants had been widely adopted throughout the United States in the early-twentieth century for the purpose of banning racial minorities from living in certain areas. Although all such covenants had become legally unenforceable in the 1960s, little had been done by 2020 to purge the covenants from official legal records. The bill signed by Northam in 2020 allows property owners to have the covenants removed without the need of an attorney. Later in the year, during a special legislative session largely devoted to racial justice issues, Northam signed a bill making it a hate crime in Virginia for someone motivated by bias against any protected group to make a false report to law enforcement. Confederate monuments On the controversies over public monuments to the Confederacy, in June 2017 Northam stated that the statues in the state Capitol that the General Assembly has jurisdiction over "should be taken down and moved into museums", and that the decision on other statues "belongs to local communities." He has said that there should be more public memorials to historical Virginia civil rights leaders such as Barbara Rose Johns, Oliver Hill, and Samuel Wilbert Tucker. In August 2017, Northam took a firmer stance, saying, "I believe these statues should be taken down and moved into museums. As governor, I am going to be a vocal advocate for that approach and work with localities on this issue." Northam later reverted to his original stance that decisions on the monuments should be made locally. In early June 2020, Northam announced the removal of Robert E. Lee Monument on Richmond's Monument Avenue in response to Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd. Criminal justice Felony larceny threshold After Northam was elected governor, The Washington Post identified an opportunity for bipartisan legislation in raising Virginia's felony larceny threshold. Set at $200, the threshold was then tied with New Jersey for lowest in the nation. The threshold's value had not been raised since 1980, and had it kept pace with inflation, would have been equal to around $600 in 2017. Outgoing governor Terry McAuliffe attempted during his final year in office to