Minnesota’s ‘Orwellian’ Bias Registry Will Chill Speech, Could Be Used to Punish Enemies, Critics Say

Writing an article claiming that Covid-19 is a Chinese bioweapon.

Wearing a T-shirt that expresses love for Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling.

Not using someone’s preferred pronouns. Posting a Bible verse online critical of homosexuality.

These are all examples of alleged hate that could soon be compiled by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and logged in a new database or registry of bias under a proposal that has already been approved by the state’s Democrat-controlled house and senate.

As part of the registry, Minnesota would begin documenting allegations of bias, hate, and microaggressions that don’t amount to crimes or don’t already run afoul of anti-discrimination laws in the state, which is increasingly becoming a testing grounds for far-left policies.

Republican opponents have called the prospect of a bias database “Orwellian” and “terrifying.” It will chill speech, they say, and with so few guardrails, it will surely be ripe for abuse.

Democratic lawmakers, on the other hand, say it is needed so state leaders have a better understanding of the real level of hate and bias in various pockets of the state, so they can combat it. But Minnesota Democrats have struggled to answer basic questions clarifying what information will and will not be collected, how human-rights department officials will ensure the allegations they log are real, and how, exactly, the data they collect will be used.

But, they insist, there’s no reason for concern. Their opponents, they say, are pushing conspiracy theories, and don’t understand what it’s like to “feel other and like an outcast.”

However, those Democrats don’t seem interested in answering question about the initiative.

National Review reached out to the lead house and senate authors of the legislation on the phone and via email with detailed questions. Most did not respond. Senate President Bobby Champion was too busy to answer any questions about it, according to a spokesman.

When reached on her personal cell phone, Minnesota Human Rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero said she was unavailable to comment, told a reporter to request an interview with her communications director, and then hung up. She did not respond to a formal interview request.

“This is another brick in the wall of this kind of totalitarian surveillance state that believes it has the right to get inside your head and dictate what sort of ideas rattle around in there,” state Representative Walter Hudson, a Republican from Albertville and one of the loudest opponents of the initiative, told National Review.

Hudson said Minnesota Democrats have batted around the idea of a bias database in the past. This year, the initiative started in single-subject bills in the house and senate. The language was then wrapped into an omnibus public-safety bill that both chambers approved last month.

The omnibus bill, which is now being finalized in conference committee, appropriates $934,000 to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights over the next two years to “gather, analyze, and report on discrimination and hate incidents throughout Minnesota.”

According to the language of the bill, the department will:

solicit, receive, and compile information from community organizations, school districts and charter schools, and individuals regarding incidents committed in whole or in substantial part because of the victim’s or another’s actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, or disability.

Speaking before a house public-safety panel about the initiative in January, Representative Samantha Vang, a Democrat from Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, noted anti-Asian discrimination during the Covid-19 pandemic as one reason the bias registry is needed.

“We have videos on social media, anecdotal evidence of violence, harassment, and slurs. But there is no official place to document the amount of hate and bias incidents being reported by community members,” said Vang, who didn’t respond to questions from National Review.

The U.S. Department of Justice already tracks hate crimes, though supporters of the Minnesota registry say that bias incidents are underreported. In many cases they’re not crimes.

During the same hearing, Lucero provided a hypothetical allegation of hate that could be logged by her department: A person is standing on the side of the road when someone drives by and yells out a racist or derogatory comment — “just these little incidents of just really kind of starting to terrorize somebody in their own community,” she said.

She noted that police would likely not investigate an incident like that. “So, it will never be documented, tracked,” Lucero said. “No one will ever know about it except that person who experienced it and their community members who feel the residual effects of that.”

However, supporters of the bias registry have struggled to indicate where the lines are.

Hudson asked Vang if social-media posts could be logged by the state if they reference a Bible verse that speaks in “condemning terms regarding certain sexual proclivities.” In a contentious floor debate, Representative Harry Niska, a Twin Cities-area Republican, asked Vang if claiming that “Covid-19 is a Chinese bioweapon” or wearing a shirt that says “I love J. K. Rowling” could be recorded. Rowling has run afoul of leftist advocates for speaking out against the most extreme demands of the transgender movement.

Vang’s responses were typically general and sometimes evasive — she’s not a lawyer, she said — though she didn’t deny that any of those hypotheticals could be logged by the state.

“I would just say, it is important to let our community know that we do not tolerate hate and bias incidents in this community and in Minnesota, and that we support communities that has been harassed, intimidated, and abused,” she told Hudson in January.

“Everyone is protected,” she added. “No exceptions.”

However, she demurred last month when Niska, who is white, asked if human-rights department staffers should log an allegation of bias involving a hypothetical video in which someone suggests that “white kids should feel bad about American history.”

“Coming from a marginalized community,” replied Vang, whose parents are Hmong refugees from Thailand, “I think it might be hard for you to understand what it is like to feel other and like an outcast.”

Democratic lawmakers did not respond to a question from National Review about whether allegations of bias against non-marginalized communities would be logged in the registry.

In fact, it is unclear if the Department of Human Rights would be vetting the allegations at all. If they’re not, it’s unclear how the department would prevent fraudulent allegations from being included in the registry, and how they would prevent people from flooding the registry with fake complaints to falsely paint a particular community in a bad light.

If the department is vetting complaints, it is unclear how it will ensure that staffers doing the vetting aren’t weeding out complaints from politically disfavored groups.

Representative Jamie Becker-Finn, one of the Democratic authors of the legislation, suggested during house floor debate that there would be no vetting. “The Department of Human Rights cannot control what people report to them. If the person reported it, then they would aggregate that data,” she said. “They’re not driving around looking for things to report.”

Becker-Finn did not respond to emails and phone calls from National Review.

Hudson said that two themes emerged during debates in committees and on the house floor.

“One, that whoever takes that call at the Department of Human Rights has total discretion, complete discretion to determine whether or not it’s something they’re going to include in the registry,” he said. “And two, the person making the report is not to be questioned regarding whether or not there is any legitimacy to their claim whatsoever.”

“Literally anything, actual or perceived, real or made up, that gets reported to the Department of Human Rights could just be copied and pasted into this registry, no questions asked, unless the person taking the call doesn’t feel like doing it that day,” he added.

He said the legislation doesn’t seem to anticipate the possibility of fake complaints, and depending on how state officials use the data, they could unwittingly encourage phony reports. Hudson said he fears that the registry could help to pave the way toward a type of municipal social-credit system where state funding for various projects could be based in part on a community’s social-credit rating.

The legislative language does not indicate any penalties for making phony reports.

“Not only are you not going to get punished for making one, you’re potentially incentivized to,” Hudson said. “If this does end up having some political utility going forward, then you create an incentive for people to fabricate stories and place them in this database in order to fuel their political agenda.”

“It’s the weaponization of a government agency in order to bear false witness against thy neighbor,” he added.

Supporters of the registry have not provided many details about how the data they gather will be used. Speaking to the house panel in January, Lucero said the data could be used to “help you and community groups inform next steps, whether that’s through education, outreach, or some other decisions you decide to make, but with a data-driven decision-making process.”

It’s unclear, however, how useful the data would be, considering questions about accuracy and whether it would present a true reflection of any community. Some communities may simply file more reports than others, even if they don’t actually experience more hate or bias.

The allegations collected would be considered “private data,” according to the legislative language, meaning they would not be public. Becker-Finn insisted during floor debate that there will be “no list of bad guys.” But the bill’s language doesn’t seem to expressly prohibit the collection of names of alleged offenders.

State representative Anne Neu Brindley, a Republican from North Branch in eastern Minnesota, called the proposed bias registry “nuts” and “crazy town,” and suggested it would collect “crime-think” violations straight out of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

“The next step is we’re going to start arresting people before they commit the crime because we have the thought database now,” she said during floor debate. “We’re literally saying that if somebody doesn’t like, if somebody feels bad by what somebody else says, if they feel bad, they’re going to report that. And that is going to be in a database. What? This is freaky stuff.”

House Majority Leader Jamie Long, a Democrat from Minneapolis, noted that the chamber was debating the bias registry just days after fires were set in two mosques in the city. A 36-year-old man has been arrested and faces federal arson charge in connection with the fires.

“It’s really offensive in a week we’ve seen attacks like this, hate crimes like this in our communities, that the first thing our colleagues across the aisle jump to is some sort of conspiracy theory, deep dive hole,” Long said, according to a report from a local NBC affiliate. “They’re talking about Big Brother, we’re talking about brotherhood, sisterhood, community, trying to keep all of us together and make sure we are protecting each other, and we are tracking incidents so that we know how to best respond.”

Hudson said Republican leaders are going to push back on the bias registry during conference negotiations in the coming days before the measure ultimately goes to Democrat Governor Tim Walz’s desk. Their efforts may be too little, too late.

“There’s all sorts of potential abuses,” that could arise from the registry, he said. “The sky is really the limit in terms of what you can do when the government starts down this path of trying to identify what it regards as trends of hatred that are completely subjectively and arbitrarily defined.”