Message
Lawmakers around the country – including here in New York – are considering banning masks under the guise of stopping crime. On Long Island, Nassau County’s recent passage of the “Mask Transparency Act” makes wearing face coverings a misdemeanor, carrying a $1,000 fine and one year prison term. This comes as COVID-19 continues to surge and anti-war protestors face increased doxxing and targeted surveillance. New York rightly repealed its prior mask ban at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Implementing a new ban will inevitably be used to disproportionately target, surveil, and criminalize protestors with controversial views, ostracize people with disabilities and their loved ones, and hurt Black, Brown, and Muslim New Yorkers.
I’m writing to urge you to reject any mask ban in New York.
- Mask bans will disproportionately impact Black, Brown, and Muslim New Yorkers.
Any mask ban will inevitably be selectively enforced and weaponized against New Yorkers who are Muslim, Black, and other people of color – all of whom already face disproportionate targeting, surveillance, and abuse by police. Police should not have legal authority to arrest or ticket people who are engaged in cultural, religious, or political expression, and wearing a mask should not be a crime.
We already know what happens when police officers are put on the front lines of mask enforcement. Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, police were called on to enforce mask-wearing mandates, resulting in disproportionate enforcement against people of color and more police aggression. There is no reason to believe that enforcing mask bans would be any different.
- Mask bans will undermine public health and push people with disabilities and those who are immunocompromised further into society’s margins.
Police are not public health experts, and should not be in charge of deciding who should be allowed to mask. More than four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus remains an ongoing threat to public health and safety, and COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York are on the rise. New infectious diseases are emerging as well, like a new bird flu outbreak amongst humans (H1N5), and doctors are still understanding the impacts of long COVID. Any health and religious exceptions are inadequate and will inevitably be selectively followed by police. In North Carolina, cancer patients have reported harassment for masking under that state’s mask ban’s health exception.
All New Yorkers should be assured of our right to wear a mask, and no one should have to fear harassment, intimidation, or arrest for trying to protect ourselves or our loved ones.
- Mask bans will violate New Yorkers’ privacy and free speech rights.
Mask-wearing is an important way for New Yorkers to safeguard their rights while speaking out. New Yorkers protesting war, police brutality, and other issues deemed unpopular by police are already subject to disparate police abuse. In New York, anti-mask laws were passed as a direct response to rent protests in 1845 and have been used since as a way to target important social movements. New York’s mask ban has been selectively enforced, criminalizing anti-war protestors, LGBTQ people riding the subway, people wearing bandanas on May Day, and people wearing Guy Fawkes masks during Occupy Wall Street in 2011. There’s no reason to assume a new mask ban wouldn’t be similarly utilized to selectively arrest, doxx, surveil, and silence protestors the police disagree with.
People should not be criminalized for what they wear. Laws that criminalize someone’s attire fly in the face of free expression principles, target vulnerable communities, and threaten the foundation of our civil liberties. In the digital age, banning masks is especially concerning. Most recently, those speaking out about Israel and Palestine in the last year have faced harmful consequences for their safety and careers after being identified online. New Yorkers engaged in demonstrating must have the right to protect themselves from doxxing and police surveillance in an increasingly digital world.
No one should fear that wearing a facial covering – whether a mask, religious covering, scarf, or any other covering – could lead to being stopped, ticketed or arrested by police.
I urge you to reject any mask ban to protect New Yorkers against biased enforcement, police harassment, and to safeguard our health and privacy rights.
