Bill Would Exempt Bias Reporting From FOIA
Days after Gov. Ned Lamont and members of the Connecticut Hate Crime Advisory Council announced a legislative proposal that would overhaul the state’s hate crime laws and touted a public reporting tool for alleged hate crime incidents, a bill that would seemingly exempt those reports from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is set to go before the Government Administration and Elections Committee.
As currently written, the bill would exempt “any database for the reporting of such allegations established by the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at the University of Connecticut” from FOIA disclosure. The Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at UConn appears to be the only place where responses submitted to the portal are publicly available.
Inside Investigator recently submitted a FOIA request to the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) seeking the information. The hate crime advisory council is housed within the Chief State’s Attorney’s office, which itself is part of DCJ. However, DCJ responded that it does not have any role in monitoring the site and would not consider the records FOIA-able even if it did. DCJ is not considered a public agency under FOIA, except for certain administrative records.
Inside Investigator has since filed a FOIA request with UConn seeking responses submitted through the portal, in an effort to make the process by which they are investigated more transparent.
The bill would also exempt the name and address of the individual who makes a report of a crime that violates the state’s hate crimes statutes from FOIA disclosure, as well as the name of the alleged offender, from disclosure in requests to law enforcement agencies. While Lamont intends to release legislation consolidating the state’s hate crime laws as part of his budget proposal later this week, the bill, as currently drafted, references Connecticut’s existing hate crime statutes.
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told Inside Investigator that the free speech organization is “deeply concerned” about the growing number of states and municipalities “encouraging people to report lawful speech to the government.”
“Connecticut specifically solicits reports of non-criminal ‘bias or hate incidents,’ including mere speech, but the First Amendment broadly protects even speech that people find biased or offensive.” Terr added. “These bias reporting systems originated on college campuses, where they contributed to a repressive environment in which students and faculty were reported for their opinions on a wide range of social and political issues. Now these hotlines threaten to create a similar climate of fear and self-censorship in broader society, especially given many states’ lack of transparency about how the data is used. FIRE takes no position on how the government gathers reports of actual crimes, including hate crimes. But Connecticut and other states should not establish systems that explicitly solicit reports about protected speech, anonymous or not.”
Terr also expressed concern that access to information about how those reporting systems operate might be shielded from public scrutiny by exempting it from FOIA.
“Exemptions that serve interests like protecting privacy should be narrowly drawn to avoid compromising the public’s ability to scrutinize the state’s actions, including how it handles reports about constitutionally protected speech. That information may be crucial for knowing whether the state is upholding its First Amendment obligations.” Terr added.
The bill is not the only bill that would add categories of information to FOIA exemptions that have been filed this session. A bill that would exempt many categories of records produced by the University of Connecticut and other public education institutions has been reintroduced.
Multiple bills that have been filed would also expand the categories of public employees whose private residences are exempt from FOIA disclosure. One proposal would make the addresses of public school employees exempt from FOIA disclosure. Another would make the residential addresses of federal prosecutors and attorneys in the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP) exempt from FOIA disclosure.
Similar bills have been introduced in previous sessions but have not been approved. A broader bill that would make all state employees’ residential addresses exempt from FOIA disclosure by eliminating an existing list in state statute that specifies which categories of public employees’ addresses are exempt has been reintroduced in previous years and refiled this year.
There is currently a statutory process where state employees can request that a residential address be substituted for a business address in records that are disclosed through FOIA.
Another proposal would prohibit the disclosure of the names and residential addresses of lottery winners. Other bills would exempt the plans of single family homes and the addresses of centers that serve domestic violence and sexual assault victims. In addition, that bill would require that any public meeting where those centers were discussed to enter executive session.
Of the proposed measures, only one would add to the categories of information subject to FOIA. One bill would specify that signed absentee ballot applications are public records subject to FOIA.
