Nassau County in New York state enacted a face mask ban Wednesday, the first of its kind in the country post-COVID-19 pandemic.
The new ban makes it a crime for anyone to wear a mask or face covering to hide their identity, except for health or religious reasons. Violating the new law is a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The Mask Transparency Act was approved earlier this month by the Republican-controlled Nassau County Legislature on Long Island and was signed into law by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. All 12 Republicans in the legislature voted in favor of the ban, while the seven Democrats abstained. The legislators cited protests of the Israel-Hamas war as reason for the new measure.
The ban comes two months after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was considering banning face masks for riders using New York City’s subway system. During a news conference in June, Hochul said she was looking into the mask ban after “a group donning masks took over a subway car, scaring riders and chanting things about Hitler and wiping out Jews.”
“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to evade [responsibility] for criminal or threatening behavior,” Hochul said during the news conference.
The new law has already drawn pushback. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) slammed Nassau County’s ban in a press release, arguing that the law shows a prioritization of “a culture war over protecting the rights and well-being of [Blakeman’s] own residents”
“Officials should be supporting New Yorkers’ right to voice their views, not fueling widespread doxxing and threatening arrests,” said Susan Gottehrer, Nassau County Regional Director of the NYCLU. “Masks also protect people’s health, especially at a time of rising COVID rates, and make it possible for people with elevated risk to participate in public life.”
New York state senator Iwen Chu posted a statement on X last week arguing that the legislation “may lead to anti-Asian hate and discrimination” because wearing masks is “common practice in many Asian cultures.”
The law exempts people who wear masks for health, safety, and religious purposes or “peaceful celebration.”
Though the COVID-19 pandemic led to the normalization of mask-wearing in public for protection from infection, Hochul is not the only leader who has called for potential mask bans or harsher penalties for protestors wearing masks.
In June, North Carolina passed a mask restriction, which allows people to wear medical or surgical-grade masks in public to prevent spreading contagious disease, but law enforcement and property owners can ask people to remove those masks to verify their identity. The measure also increases the punishment for crimes committed while wearing a mask.
There is a long history of mask bans in the United States, especially in the 1940s and 1950s when members of the Ku Klux Klan wore face coverings to hide their identity. Mask bans have been utilized to arrest protestors in the past, but as protests over the Israel-Hamas war have intensified this year, state officials and university administrations dusted off some of these laws in order to dissuade protestors from wearing masks.
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