The Illinois legislature is considering what could become the first state law in the country specifically tailored to allow victims of wife-beating, gay-bashing and other violence based on gender or sexual orientation to sue their attackers.

The bill, modeled on an embattled federal statute, was introduced in the state's House of Representatives on Monday with a strong push from Gov. George Ryan.

"With the Gender Violence Act in place, Illinois would become a true pioneer, a state with an antiviolence law that empowers victims," said Mr. Ryan, a moderate Republican often at odds with his party's conservatives.

"Our sisters, wives and daughters," he said, "as well as our brothers, sons and friends, deserve the right to their day in court if they are brutally victimized or threatened."

The legislation would specifically empower the targets of violence or threats motivated by gender or sexual orientation, or by "actual, perceived or attributed sex or gender role conformity or nonconformity," to sue in the Illinois courts. It is likely to pass the Democratic-controlled House but faces an uphill battle against the State Senate's Republican majority.

Conservative organizations oppose the legislation. "There is no reason in the world to give preference to homosexuals," said Jack O. Roeser, president of the Family Taxpayers Network, which advocates family values and tort reform. Mr. Roeser said criminal law already provided protection against such crimes.

Women's and gay rights groups praised the measure. "There is not another such bill, much less law, at the state level," declared Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, who said NOW would like to see similar laws enacted in each state. "This is the first of its kind for civil damages for gender- and sex-based" crimes.

And Patricia M. Logue, supervising attorney at the Chicago office of the gay-rights Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said: "It creates one more set of disincentives to this kind of conduct. It is a logical next step for our state," which already has a criminal statute that strengthens penalties when an assault, say, is judged a hate crime.

As for business groups, they are divided on the new legislation. One organization against it is the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.

"We are not opposed to the concept," said Todd C. Maisch, the chamber's vice president for government affairs, but "the way we look at it, it looks like it is intended for a victim of violent crime to go after the deepest pockets."

Mr. Maisch was referring to a provision that would allow victims to sue not only their attackers but also any individual, group, business or other institution responsible for the discrimination that led to the attack.

But the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, representing businesses in and around the city, supports the bill. "This gives an individual an opportunity to sue the real perpetrator," said Jerry J. Roper, the Chicagoland chamber's president and chief executive.

While victims of assault can always sue under broadly worded civil statutes, the thinking behind the Illinois legislation is that a law specifically tailored to particular kinds of victims gives them a better chance of prevailing at trial.

Enactment would make Illinois the first state to adopt a law modeled on the federal Violence Against Women Act, a 1994 statute that, specifically tailored to assaulted women, allowed them to sue their attackers in federal court. A challenge to the federal law is now before the Supreme Court, a majority of which appeared skeptical about the measure when arguments were heard on Jan. 11; the justices seemed inclined to the view that jurisdiction ought to lie in the states, not Congress.

In one sense, the Illinois bill would go further than the federal law, because it would cover not only women as a whole but specifically lesbians and also gay men, as well as those who, like transvestites or transsexuals, are assaulted because of their "sexual or gender nonconformity."

The bill was drafted by the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, whose chairwoman, Judith A. Gold, said: "We hope that this serves as a model for other states. Violence against women is not a partisan issue."
        

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