At his blog, academic free speech warrior Greg Lukianoff reports on the spread of “bias reporting systems” from campuses into urban areas in the United States:

I am speaking about bias reporting systems, sometimes called bias response teams, which are essentially snitch hotlines where people can report others for “offensive” or “hateful” speech. The act of doing this to your fellow Americans over protected speech would be bad enough, but these systems go further. They often consist not only of administrators, but also law enforcement. Your eyes are not deceiving you. These systems include law enforcement dedicated to “responding” to reports on First Amendment-protected speech.

These terrible policies grew up on campus, and now they are trying to infect the real world. FIRE Senior Writer & Editor and ERI contributor Angel Eduardo has just published a thorough explainer on bias reporting systems on FIRE’s website, explaining what they are, how they work, and why they’re an obvious and egregious threat to free speech. I encourage you all to read it.

“Bias reporting systems were a nightmare on campus — and now they’re everywhere,” January 22, 2025

At FIRE, the free-speech-on-campus group of which Lukianoff is president, Eduardo offers, “Wherever they’ve popped up, these bias reporting systems have been bad news. Washington Free Beacon journalist Aaron Sibarium’s research has turned up a number of alarming examples. In Oregon, citizens can report ‘offensive ‘jokes’ and ‘imitating someone’s cultural norm or practice.’”

Lukianoff adds, “It gets worse, too. Bias reporting systems in some states, like Connecticut, let you report things you weren’t even there to witness yourself.”

But the trend may be short-lived, for two reasons. Ben Weingarten reports at his Substack,

Flanked by some of the Big Tech executives whose companies had suppressed the views of his supporters throughout his predecessor’s term, President Trump on Jan. 20 declared the days of such speech policing over.

Hours later, the president put action behind his words, signing an executive order prohibiting the federal government from engaging in, facilitating, or funding “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”

“Trump Free Speech Executive Order Targets the Global Censorship-Industrial Complex,” January 28, 2025

In any event, most of it sounds unconstitutional.

There is a big difference between campus and community: On campus, fear of not graduating seals many lips. But out in the community, many people will have nothing to lose by taking on the Bias Police.