The Trump administration is waging an all-out war on free speech, the rule of law, immigrant rights, public health, and even taking over American cities. There is no shortage of work to be done by our state and local leaders to defend against these attacks. Yet instead of fighting for our rights, Governor Hochul and several lawmakers spent weeks of their precious time during this year’s legislative session advocating for a mask ban, a policy that plays directly into Trump’s hands.
Everyday New Yorkers, public health experts, and advocacy groups – including Jews for Mask Rights, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and the NYCLU – successfully defeated Hochul’s push for an all-out mask ban. But the Governor and other anti-mask politicians forced through a provision that creates a new charge for instances when a person “conceals their identity” while committing certain crimes. This means that wearing a face covering alone is not a crime, which is an important victory.
While it’s true that we beat back the originally proposed mask ban, the fight is far from finished.
Mask Bans Proliferate
Local mask bans have already been enacted in Nassau County on Long Island and in Ballston Spa near Albany. And while a complete mask ban did not pass this legislative session, anti-mask advocates have made it clear they’re not content with the narrow restriction that was enacted. They want a full mask ban. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has even floated the idea of a ban that punishes offenders with significant jail time.
Contrary to proponents’ promises, a mask ban will not curb crime or combat antisemitism. It is a performative move that ignores the root causes of crime. Politicians can promote true public safety by addressing people’s most basic needs like housing, health care, and education. And using Jewish safety as a pretext for banning masks actually perpetuates harmful antisemitic tropes about Jews having outsized power over government. It also disregards the root causes of antisemitic hate, and tramples on free speech rights of Jewish people.
A Mask Ban for Thee but Not for ICE
While everyday people face ongoing threats to their right to wear a face covering, local and federal officials are pushing for special rules for law enforcement. Todd Lyons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s director, is fighting to allow ICE agents to conceal their identities for privacy reasons. Here in New York, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman – who fought relentlessly to ban everyday people from wearing masks – is pushing to allow police officers to wear a mask whenever they please. In this scenario, a masked police officer would have legal ground to arrest someone else for wearing a mask.
For those keeping score at home: Mask ban proponents think average New Yorkers must be easily identifiable at all times. But law enforcement agents – who have a long history of abuse and are supposed to work for and be accountable to the public – must be allowed to operate in secret and hide their identities.
Another Tool for Discrimination
Any mask ban, even the limited provision that was passed, is dangerous and puts New Yorkers at greater risk of police abuse, criminalization, and surveillance. We know Black New Yorkers are disproportionately surveilled, arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes, and they are the ones most likely to be negatively impacted by mask restrictions.
More broadly, any mask ban – even one with carveouts for health and religious use – creates a stigma around mask-wearing. A ban will inevitably be selectively enforced and weaponized against New Yorkers of color, Muslim New Yorkers, trans New Yorkers, and those who are disabled – all of whom are already disproportionately targeted, surveilled, and abused by police.
A Public Health Disaster
The push for a mask ban is even more alarming as we face a federal administration fervently committed to defunding our health care infrastructure and spreading misinformation about public health risks, from COVID to the largest measles outbreak in decades.
More than five years on, COVID remains a serious public health threat. Masks also offer protections against other health risks, like a new bird flu outbreak amongst humans and dangerous air quality levels due to wildfire smoke. Banning face masks undermines public health and pushes people with disabilities and those who are immunocompromised further into the margins. This isn’t a hypothetical problem. After a mask ban passed in North Carolina, a cancer patient reported being harassed for masking.
Muzzling Protests
New York’s attempts to restrict mask-wearing are not new – they’re part of our long history of suppressing residents’ First Amendment rights. The State first criminalized masks in 1845 to crack down on rent protests in the Hudson Valley. Law enforcement later used mask bans to criminalize anti-war protestors in the 1960s, people wearing Guy Fawkes masks during Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and more. In 2020, New York rightly repealed its existing mask ban in response to the COVID pandemic.
Anyone questioning why people might want to anonymously protest by wearing a mask should look at the case of Mahmoud Khalil. Mr. Khalil is a lawful permanent resident and recent graduate student at Columbia University who was arrested by the Trump administration solely in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian human rights. He is one of hundreds of other students whom Trump wants to deport for the same reason. And, he was easy to target precisely because he did not mask at protests.
Other Columbia students who publicly advocated for Palestinian rights had their names and faces broadcast on a doxxing truck parked outside the university’s gates. As a result, a prestigious law firm rescinded job offers it had made to two of these students. Across the country, staff and students – including Mr. Khalil – discovered that their names, locations and activities had been publicized on an anonymously run website. The Department of Homeland Security has admitted to consulting this website when targeting international students for deportation.
The administration could decide to expand the parameters of who they catch in this dragnet. Close presidential advisers are openly musing about charging anyone who doesn’t agree with certain Trump policies with providing material support for terrorism. Given this climate, it’s easy to see why a broad range of New Yorkers would want to shield their identity while they exercise their right to protest.
Any mask restriction is likely to be used to selectively criminalize, doxx, surveil, and silence pro-Palestine protestors, immigrant rights advocates, those protesting police brutality, and others speaking out on issues deemed unpopular by police and some politicians. New Yorkers have grown familiar with seeing droves of officers with cameras, police drones, and helicopters monitoring and capturing images of protestors.
Those who choose to wear a mask at protests and in daily life have good reason to do so – to protect themselves from surveillance in an increasingly digital world.
We won this battle against one state mask ban – but we must keep fighting against any other local or state ban in New York. Our leaders should focus on delivering real benefits to New Yorkers and fighting back against the Trump administration. Instead, they worked to make it easier for Trump and other fascist forces to increase discriminatory policing and surveillance, crack down on dissent, and undermine public health.