Washington State Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Hotline Now Active
An Update on the Pilot Program that launched today
Last June we warned about Washington State’s plan to roll out a so-called “Hate Crime and Bias Incident Hotline.” We said in our previous post that this hotline wouldn’t be about safety—it would be about control. And now, one year later, the Attorney General has officially launched the pilot program in King, Clark, and Spokane counties. The hotline is now live.
“Hate crimes not only directly harm individuals but also can instill harm throughout the community,” Attorney General Nick Brown said. “Success in these three counties will help us expand the hotline statewide and better understand how to combat hate crimes and bias incidents across Washington.”
To be clear: this hotline isn’t just for reporting actual hate crimes. It’s also a place to report “bias incidents,” which are not crimes at all. In fact, they’re not even clearly defined. A bias incident could be anything that makes someone uncomfortable—something said in a classroom, a joke someone didn’t like, a personal opinion shared online. If someone feels like it was motivated by bias, that’s enough to get it logged into the system.
It is completely subjective and open to interpretation.
While the AG’s office promises this is just about “support and resources,” the fact is that this is the state setting up an official mechanism to track speech and thought under the banner of public safety. And no matter how they dress it up in buzzwords like “trauma-informed” and “culturally competent,” this is the government collecting data on people for saying the wrong thing—not for committing a crime.
“When immigrant families in my network face verbal harassment that makes them afraid to send their children to school, when transgender people of color experience daily microaggressions that chip away at their humanity, when our elders are told to ‘go back where they came from’ — these are acts of violence that shape our material conditions and our ability to exist safely in the world. The hotline creates space for these experiences to be documented, believed, and responded to with culturally competent, trauma-informed care.”
Catalina Velasquez, executive director of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network.
If you report a hate crime, it can be forwarded to law enforcement—but only with your consent. Bias incidents, though, are funneled into a centralized database and passed along to community groups and nonprofits who will… what, exactly? Offer you counseling because someone hurt your feelings? Redirect your trauma into a restorative circle?
Definitions
Washington law defines a hate crime as assault, property damage or threats to cause injury or property damage that is committed because of the perception of a person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, or disability.
Bias incidents are acts of prejudice that are not criminal in nature and do not involve violence, threats, or property damage. While bias incident cannot be criminally charged, they are important to report.
This program is the product of Senate Bill 5427, passed in 2023. And from day one, the goal has been clear: build the infrastructure to monitor “bias” at the state level. If the pilot goes smoothly, the plan is to expand it statewide by January 2027. An official report is due in July of that year—but by then, how much damage will already have been done to free speech and open dialogue?
Washington state, along with California and Oregon, have the most expansive and broad hate crime laws in the country.
WATCH: Washington State legislature expanded on the hate crime laws in the 2025 legislative session:
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What a SUBJECTIVE COLLECTION of Garbage. There is no doubt that this “test from 3 counties WILL expand next year😡