# 18 U.S.C. § 249 *Federal hate-crime statute* **18 U.S.C. § 249** is a federal criminal civil-rights statute. Prosecutions brought under it are federal hate-crime prosecutions.[^1] The statute's text and its enactment and amendment history are not part of the record assembled here, so this article does not state them. The statute enters the Minnesota record through one at-issue item, AI-Stearns-038, in the project's Stearns County package. The item reports that no federal hate-crime prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 249 tied to any [[St. Cloud]] or Stearns County incident was located. It sets that result beside a documented federal civil-rights finding of a hostile environment in the county's schools.[^1] The item is anchored to the January 2025 presidential action *Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity*.[^2] The project gives its reason for the anchor in its own words: "an unused instrument is a finding about the instrument, not the county".[^1] ## What The item rests on two statements. The first is that the federal statute exists. The second is that, in a county with a documented federal civil-rights finding of a hostile environment in its schools, no federal criminal civil-rights case under it was located.[^1] The second statement is a negative finding about the record that was searched. The record does not establish whether a case was ever referred or considered, and it does not establish why none was located.[^1] ## In the at-issue record AI-Stearns-038 appears in the section *The Jurisdiction Gap & the Unrecorded Record Edition*. The project ranks it 38 and gives it a shock score of 74. Its source is paragraph 43 of the validated research dossier *RESEARCH_NewMinnesotans_SCSU.md*.[^1] The item records two sources. Their kinds are listed as agency and note, and their domains as ed.gov and justice.gov. The item is tagged as an unused instrument, as a negative finding, and as flagged.[^1] The one URL listed with the row is its White House anchor. That page is the instrument the item is measured against. It is not the agency finding itself.[^2] ## Notes [^1]: Minnesota wiki at-issue record, *AI-Stearns-038* (Stearns package; from validated dossier *RESEARCH_NewMinnesotans_SCSU.md* ¶43) — states the negative finding that no federal hate-crime prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 249 tied to a St. Cloud or Stearns County incident was located, the documented federal civil-rights finding of hostile environment in the county's schools, the anchor rationale, and the item's rank, score, source counts and tags. The URL listed with the row is its anchor. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/ [^2]: The White House, *Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity* (January 2025) — presidential action serving as the federal anchor for at-issue item AI-Stearns-038. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/