Racially motivated emergency calls constitute a recognized legal harm requiring remedy

Evidence

On Monday, June 3, 2019, Oregon State Senate passed a bill that would allow individuals who are victims of racially biased emergency calls to sue those who make these calls with discriminatory intentions (Lockhart, 2019). The initiative comes almost a year after Janelle Bynum, a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, had someone call 911 on her as she campaigned in her district. The bill would allow victims to sue the callers for as much as $250, so long as they can prove that the call was made with the intention to discriminate. This type of bill, which is likely to be adopted by other states as well, is a response to many recent instances in which White civilians have called 911 on minorities for reasons that remain unclear. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 260

Categorization

• QUESTION: The bill premises liability on proving the caller’s intent to discriminate — direct relevance to the reader’s sincerity-vs-measured-bias question, since intent-based liability may miss bias that callers deny.
• XREF: Connects to disparate-impact vs. discriminatory-intent jurisprudence and the reader’s question of whether professed racist conviction predicts biased action.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 260