(NewsNation) — Minnesota’s House of Representatives passed a bill that would create the nation’s first office to investigate cases of missing Black women and girls.

The bill’s author, Democratic state Rep. Ruth Richardson, told Yahoo News that “it’s on the fast track this year to be signed into law. … This is part of the governor’s budget, and it’s one of his top priorities. So we are excited to be at a point where we can finally get this across the finish line.”

Richardson introduced the bill to create the office, but she hopes it will provide framework for legislators across the country to address the crisis, The19th reported.

All around the country, there are people searching for lost loved ones. Black women, particularly in Minnesota, are three times more likely to be murdered than white women, and their cases are less likely to be solved, according to the Missing and Murdered African American Women (MMAAW) Task Force report.

The bill (HF55) passed 110-19, and it must pass through the Senate and be signed by Gov. Tim Walz in order to become law. 

In the United States, Black women and girls make up just 13% of the female population, but they accounted for 35% of all missing women in 2020. Nearly 100,000 of the quarter million women and girls who went missing in the U.S. in 2020 were women of color.

At the 2004 Unity: Journalists of Color conference, late journalist Gwen Ifill called out the media for having “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” The term refers to the mainstream media’s seeming fascination with covering missing or endangered white women and their disinterest in cases involving missing people of color.

NewsNation has launched a weekly series called “Missing” (formerly called “Missing in America”). We will highlight cases across the country and families searching for answers.