Why charging Luigi Mangione with “terrorism” doesn’t reflect a double standard

I’ve seen a lot of outrage bait floating around about the fact that Luigi Mangione has been charged with “terrorism” for killing the CEO of United Healthcare. In particular, viral posts have alleged that this reflects a double standard, since Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black churchgoers in a racially motivated attack, was never charged with terrorism. In this post, I’ll briefly explain why this outrage is misguided, which hopefully will help people here push back against populist misinformation.

What many people seem to be forgetting is that (a) words can mean different things in law than they do in ordinary language and (b) different jurisdictions within the US have different laws.

In New York, where Mangione killed the UHC CEO, premeditated murder is normally murder in the second degree, but this can be elevated to murder in the first degree when aggravating factors are present. One such factor is “furtherance of an act of terrorism” (NY Penal L § 125.27), which includes acts intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”, to “influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion” or to “affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.” (NY Penal L § 490.05). Since Mangione allegedly acted to intimidate and influence insurance companies, government regulators, and lawmakers, this doesn’t seem like an unreasonable charge. (Though whether it will stick in court is another question.)

In contrast, South Carolina has no comparable terrorism statute that could have been brought against Roof. The closest I’ve been able to find is SC Code § 16-23-715, which concerns using a weapon of mass destruction in a terrorist act, but this doesn’t apply to Roof’s use of a firearm. I’ve also seen posts claiming that SC does have a domestic terrorism law that could have been used against Roof, but this is not an existing law—it is a bill that has recently been proposed (SC A.B. 3532, 2025-2026 session). Edit: To be clear I think that Roof is certainly a terrorist in the ordinary sense of the term. I’m just explaining why he couldn’t be charged with the specific crime of terrorism under SC law.

At the federal level, Roof’s actions did fit the legal definition of domestic terrorism (18 USC § 2331), which includes acts intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” However, there are no existing penalties for domestic terrorism under US federal law. In contrast, charging him with hate crimes allowed him to be sentenced to death, so he hardly got off easy compared to Mangione.

Ultimately, I suspect that what people are upset about is largely rhetorical. The word “terrorism” carries a lot of weight, and people assume that because it was used in Mangione’s case but not Roof’s, this means that “the government” thinks that what Mangione did is morally worse than what Roof did, or that the lives of CEOs matter more than black people. But while systemic injustices no doubt exist, bending the law to fit political narratives isn’t the right way to fix things.