How to read this project.

Hidden in Plain Text is an LLM-assisted research effort to surface potentially discriminatory provisions in U.S. municipal codes at scale. The map and provision explorer are designed to help public (including researchers and public officials) prioritize laws for review.

No. A flag indicates that a provision shares language patterns associated with discriminatory framing or exclusion. Constitutional and statutory legality still requires legal analysis by qualified experts.

This dataset is designed to support legal research and policy analysis. All flagged provisions should be reviewed by a qualified legal professional before drawing conclusions or taking action.

When possible, users should consult the original municipal code to verify context and interpretation.

• Not all municipalities or code versions are represented.
• Publication and ingestion lags can leave recent amendments out of view.
• Some jurisdictions have sparse metadata, reducing filter precision.

• False positives occur when non-discriminatory text resembles harmful patterns.
• False negatives occur when discriminatory intent is subtle or context-dependent.
• OCR/parsing artifacts and formatting drift can affect span anchoring quality.

• Constitutional analysis depends on doctrine, jurisdiction, and factual context beyond the text snippet.
• Historical provisions may remain in code but be superseded, unenforced, or preempted.
• The project does not provide legal advice and should not be treated as such.