"Bias reporting" has moved from college campuses to communities, writes Aaron Sibarium in the Washington Free Beacon. In some places, your neighbor can report your offensive joke or unpopular opinion or misgendering to government workers, who will . . . Well, it's not clear what they're supposed to do about it.
The Oregon Department of Justice launched a hotline to take reports of "bias incidents"—"non-criminal" expression motivated, "in part," by prejudice or hate, he writes.
Oregonians are encouraged to report their fellow citizens for things like "creating racist images," "mocking someone with a disability," and "sharing offensive ‘jokes’ about someone’s identity." One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists "imitating someone’s cultural norm" as something "we want to hear" about.
Reports are stripped of identifying data and passed on to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission.
Sibarium called the hotline to with a made-up complaint. He said he was a Muslim concerned about Gaza who felt "targeted" by an Israeli flag on his neighbor's door.
The hotline operator suggested installing security cameras, and said that "as a victim of a bias incident," the Muslim "could apply for taxpayer-funded therapy through the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Program."
When the Free Beacon submitted a separate complaint about a "From the River to the Sea" sign, an operator again suggested security cameras, adding the state might help pay for them.
Oregon isn't the only state that lets people report protected speech, Sibarium writes. California, Illinois, and New York have set up systems to report non-criminal "bias incidents" against a protected class, and "Washington state will launch its own system this year."
By the end of 2025, he writes "nearly 100 million Americans will live in a state where they can be reported for protected speech.
Some states say the information is used to track trends. Others say the goal is to offer counseling and legal aid to "victims" of bias. However, "Vermont tells residents to report 'biased but protected speech' directly to the police."
Cities and counties also have set up snitch lines. Philadelphia's online form asks for the address of the "hate incident," as well as the name and gender identity of the offender, Sibarium writes. The city contacts "the offending party" to request they go through sensitivity training, said a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations.
"A few states imply that the potential to chill speech is a feature, not a bug, of their reporting systems," writes Sibarium. Illinois’s hotline calls for sending a message to "offenders" that "hate will not be tolerated."
"People in Oregon and Vermont have been reported for a wide range of political expression, according to reports from both states," he writes. That includes campaigns "to defund city diversity initiatives, protests of controversial books in schools, editorials that question the extent of race discrimination, and displays of pro-Trump flags."
"Fascism" is often used for everything from “authoritarianism” to “anything I don’t like," tweets Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "Hell, I’ve even heard people equate support for free speech with fascism, which is just about the most ahistorical assertion imaginable."
"But neighbors reporting neighbors for speech that is protected under the First Amendment, and entire government entities created for fielding and responding to those reports, is absolutely what fascism, or really any form of totalitarianism, looks like," he writes.
FIRE's Angel Eduardo has published an explainer on bias reporting systems.
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