Several states have set up hotlines where people can report legal, constitutionally protected speech to the government. There is no indication — so far — that people are being prosecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights, but a call from the cops saying you’ve been named in a “hate incident” is intimidating enough.
In Oregon, someone contacted a hotline run by the Oregon Department of Justice and reported a neighbor for having an Israeli flag on his door. The hotline operator treated the bigot’s complaint as a report of a valid “bias incident” and the bigot as a “victim.” The operator said the caller could get rewarded with money from the state’s Crime Victim Compensation Program, even though there was no crime.
Oregon encourages reporting of “imitating someone’s cultural norm or practice.” I thought the mania against “cultural appropriation” had died out. Now apparently opening a fusion restaurant is reportable to the police.
Vermont lets people report “bias incidents.” It explicitly includes speech that is “constitutionally protected under the Vermont and federal constitutions” in reportable incidents.
The Philadelphia Council on Human Relations says it may contact reported people and “try to do training so that it doesn’t happen again.” People are free to decline the “training,” if they dare. But imagine getting a call: “This is the police. We received a report you said something we don’t like. No, we’re not going to arrest you for it, but we think you should go to a training session. It’s not mandatory, of course.” That’s intimidation, and it sounds like a First Amendment violation to me.
FIRE discusses these reporting systems:
Even a bias reporting system that stays within constitutional bounds can deter people from freely expressing their thoughts and opinions. If they are afraid that the state will investigate them or place them in a government database just for saying something that offended another person, people will understandably hold their tongues and suppress their own voices. Moreover, the lack of clarity around what some states actually do with the reports they collect is itself chilling.
By not prosecuting or applying other explicit penalties, the speech police hope to stay within the bounds of the First Amendment, but subtle intimidation violates at least its intent, if not its letter. As I wrote in my previous post, whether we keep freedom of expression depends not just on the laws on the books, but the direction our culture takes. If people are willing to look the other way when government officials collect reports of speech as “hate incidents,” it won’t last long.
Update, September 28, 2025: Here’s another case, an Ohio sheriff who urged people on Facebook to “Write down all the addresses of the people who had her [Kamala Harris] signs in their yards.” I’m adding it to provide an example of speech surveillance from the “right.”