An interesting story by Aaron Sibarium in the Washington Free Beacon. It offers a good deal of fairly concrete detail, always helpful in such analyses.
Such hotlines aren't themselves First Amendment violations, of course, unless they lead to coercive or discriminatory action against constitutionally protected speech, or at least the threat of such action. Even if they create something of a chilling effect on some people who don't want to get reported (or don't want to get reported again), that by itself isn't enough to violate the First Amendment.
Still, they do create possibilities for abuse, for instance if the resulting data is indeed at some point used to threaten the accused speakers (or deny them jobs or other opportunities). And I think they tend to create unrealistic expectations: After all, if the state says it wants you to report certain behavior, and tells you that it's bad behavior and that you're the victim of such bad behavior, wouldn't you expect that the state will actually try to do something about it?
