Lauren Irwin
Wed, May 15, 2024
The North Carolina state Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.
Republican supporters of the ban said it would help law enforcement crack down on protesters who wear masks. They say demonstrators are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestine protests nationwide and at North Carolina universities.
The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that’s been state law since the early stages of the pandemic that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.
Thirty senators voted in favor of House Bill 237, while 15 opposed it and five were absent.
Democrats raised concerns about the bill, particularly for those who are immunocompromised or those who may want to continue to wear masks during cancer treatments, WRAL News reported.
State Sen. Sydney Batch (D) is a cancer survivor and shared with her fellow senators how her family wore masks to protect her and her weakened immune system during treatment.
She and other Democrats proposed ways to amend the bill so police could still crack down on protesters but continue to have legal protections for health concerns, but they were shot down, the outlet reported.
GOP Sen. Buck Newton brushed off the concerns, saying no one saw “Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID” and thinks law enforcement will use “good common sense” when applying the law, The Associated Press (AP) reported.
The AP noted that the state’s general statutes on masking date back to the 1950s in an attempt to curb Ku Klux Klan membership, when the state passed a public masking ban.
Under the bill, if a person is arrested for protesting while masked, it would elevate the classification of a person’s crime, either a misdemeanor or felony, to one class higher.
It now heads to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper, a Democrat, could veto the bill, but the North Carolina Republican Party has a supermajority and can override the expected veto.
Opinion
The party of ‘freedom’ wants to ban mask-wearing for health reasons in NC | Opinion
The party of ‘freedom’ wants to ban mask-wearing for health reasons in NC | Opinion
the Editorial Board
Wed, May 15, 2024
The party of freedom doesn’t want to let you wear a mask to protect your own health in public.
Republican legislators have proposed a bill that would remove the health and safety exception to North Carolina’s existing ban on mask-wearing in public, which has been in place since the 1950s. That exception was added in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, but lawmakers say that it is no longer needed. Try telling that to immunocompromised people, or the elderly, or anyone else who might want to mask up to protect themselves or others.
GOP Sen. Buck Newton, the bill’s primary sponsor, suggested that those who choose to wear a mask in public for health reasons could still do so despite the law changing, because authorities have “good common sense.”
“This was not a problem pre-COVID,” Newton said in a committee hearing. “We didn’t see Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID. Frankly, I don’t think we’re going to see that when we pass this legislation, and I think those that are suggesting otherwise are stoking fear.”
The intent of the bill, Newton said, is merely to crack down on those who may wear a mask to hide their identities while committing crimes in public, and it is not intended to punish anyone who wears a mask for the sake of their health.
That argument in itself is the sign of poorly crafted legislation. If lawmakers do not intend to make something illegal, they should not write a law that makes that thing illegal and then expect authorities, businesses and the public to obey some unwritten rule that the law should not be enforced as such. That creates ambiguity and confusion, and leaving it up to authorities to use their “common sense” to determine which mask wearers are potentially criminals and which are simply being conscious of their health opens the door to a whole host of other problems.
The bill is titled “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” and it’s likely not a coincidence that it comes after a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in North Carolina and across the country. Many of those protesters were wearing masks. The bill enhances penalties for those who are wearing a mask while committing a crime. In effect, that could mean that a protester arrested for vandalism or trespassing could receive a harsher punishment simply because they were wearing a mask while protesting.
This is, plain and simple, a ridiculous bill. It should make everyone uncomfortable, regardless of whether or not you personally wish to wear a mask in public. It may be true that this was not a problem before COVID, and nobody was arresting “Granny” or chemo patients for masking up in public. But the exception lawmakers crafted during COVID also hasn’t been a problem, certainly not enough to justify taking away people’s freedom of choice. Or is “freedom” only what Republican lawmakers want it to be?
North Carolina bill to stop protesters from using masks to hide identities advances without health exemption
Danielle Wallace
Thu, May 16, 2024
North Carolina bill to stop protesters from using masks to hide identities advances without health exemption
Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred by anti-Israel demonstrations that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses.
The legislation – House Bill 237 – cleared the state's Senate on Wednesday in a 30-15 vote along party lines despite several attempts by state Senate Democrats to change the bill. The bill, which would raise penalties for someone who wears a mask while committing a crime, including arrested protesters, could still be altered as it heads back to the House.
Opponents of the bill say it risks the health of those masking for safety reasons. Those backing the legislation say it is a needed response to the protests, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that escalated to police clashes and arrests. The bill also further criminalizes the blockage of roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which has occurred during anti-Israel demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.
"It's about time that the craziness is put, at least slowed down, if not put to a stop," Wilson County Republican Sen. Buck Newton, who presented the bill, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
An Anti-Israel protester seen wearing a mask and carrying a Palestinian flag on the University of North Carolina in Charlotte campus on April 24, 2024
"There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this bill does and how the law operates, and it’s no wonder that so many folks are scared," Newton added, according to NC Newsline, questioning the motivations of those against the legislation. "I think some of us are wondering what the real motivations are of folks on the other side of the House, scaring the bejesus out of everybody and making them feel like if they have a need at times to wear masks because they’re immunocompromised somehow, they’re going to get arrested.
Most of the pushback against the bill has centered around its removal of health and safety exemptions for wearing a mask in public.
The health exemption was added at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic along largely bipartisan lines. This strikethrough would return public masking rules to their pre-pandemic form, which were created in 1953 to address a different issue: limiting Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina, the Associated Press reported, citing a 2012 book by Washington University in St. Louis sociology professor David Cunningham.
Democratic lawmakers repeated their unease about how removing protections for people who choose to mask for their health could put immunocompromised North Carolinians at risk of breaking the law. Legislative staff said during a Tuesday committee that masking for health purposes would violate the law.
"You're making careful people into criminals with this bill," Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus of Mecklenburg County said on the Senate floor. "It's a bad law."
"Is it really that you find masked chemo patients that threatening? Something about them makes you really angry?" Marcus added, according to WRAL. "Or is this, more likely, a desire to score some political points with the anti-mask crowd during an election year, at the expense of vulnerable people?"
Anti-Israel protesters on the UNC Charlotte campus on April 25, 2024.
Simone Hetherington, an immunocompromised person who spoke during Wednesday's Senate Rules Committee, said masking helps her protect herself from illnesses and fears the law would prevent that practice.
"We live in different times and I do receive harassment," Hetherington said about her mask wearing. "It only takes one bad actor."
But Republican legislators continued to express doubt that someone would get in legal trouble for masking because of health concerns, saying law enforcement and prosecutors would use discretion on whether to charge someone. Newton said the bill focuses on criminalizing masks only for the purpose of concealing one's identity.
"I smell politics on the other side of the aisle when they're scaring people to death about a bill that is only going to criminalize people who are trying to hide their identity so they can do something wrong," Newton said.
Three Senate Democrats proposed amendments to keep the health exemption and exclude hate groups from masking, but Senate Republicans used a procedural mechanism to block them without going up for a vote.
Future changes to the bill could be a possibility, but it would ultimately be up to the House, Newton told reporters after the vote, according to the AP. Robeson County Republican Sen. Danny Britt also said during an earlier committee that he anticipated "some tweaking." House Rules Committee Chairman Destin Hall, a Caldwell County House Republican, told reporters before the Senate vote that the House planned to "take a look at it" but members wanted to clamp down on people who wear masks while committing crimes.
The masking bill will likely move through a few committees before hitting the House floor, which could take one or two weeks, Hall said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Repeal of health exemption from NC’s mask ban passes Senate, sending bill to House
Avi Bajpai
Wed, May 15, 2024
The North Carolina Senate voted to repeal a health and safety exception to the state’s longstanding ban on wearing masks in public, and enhance penalties for wearing a mask while committing another crime.
Senators approved the bill, which was introduced as a substitute to existing legislation last week and cleared two committees this week, in a 30-15 vote along party lines Wednesday afternoon.
A key point of contention over the bill has been the provision that removes an exception for health and safety from the law banning mask-wearing in public that dates back to 1953. Republicans have said the pandemic-era exception is no longer necessary, but Democrats have pushed back, arguing that lawmakers should just increase penalties for people who use masks to commit crimes, and leave the health exception alone.
There’s also been strong pushback from critics who say the bill is clearly an “anti-protest” measure that is a response to recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, where masks have been common.
In addition to repealing the health and safety exception, and increasing criminal penalties for those who are found to have worn a mask to hide their identity while committing another crime, the bill also imposes new penalties for participating in demonstrations that are intended to block traffic.
Speaking against the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Sydney Batch said that the bill, as it is currently written, would leave immunocompromised people at risk.
Amendments offered by Batch and two other Democrats, Sen. Lisa Grafstein and Jay Chaudhuri, were rejected by the GOP-controlled chamber.
Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus, who said she, like other lawmakers, had heard from many people concerned about whether they would be able to continue wearing masks to protect themselves, said that Democrats are in favor of cracking down on people who conceal their identities to commit crimes, but also want to “protect the health of the people of North Carolina.”
During a meeting of the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning, GOP senators said that discussions were ongoing about potential changes to the bill once it arrived in the House. The changes would address the concerns raised by Democrats and others that taking out the health exception would make masking for that reason illegal.
Republicans pointed to the fact that for nearly 70 years, masking in public was illegal, but there were no incidents that came to mind of a person ever being arrested or prosecuted for wearing a mask for health reasons. Several people who wear masks because they are immunocompromised or have other medical problems that require them to wear one when in public, addressed committees this week with concerns about what the bill would mean for them.
House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters earlier in the day that he hadn’t read the bill yet, but echoed the argument that GOP senators had made: that the bill isn’t meant to target or penalize people who wear masks to protect their own health or the health of others, but rather, people who are “trying to willfully conceal their identity to engage in some sort of conduct that’s a problem.”
“If someone is going to come out and they’re going to protest, and they’re going to be in a public space out there, they ought to not be able to hide their identity, and I don’t care what cause it is they’re advocating for,” Moore said.
Asked about Proud Boys who have protested in public wearing different kinds of face coverings — an example that was raised earlier in the day during the Senate Rules Committee — Moore said: “I don’t care who it is, anybody who’s going to be out protesting should not be able to conceal their identity, period. I mean that just should not happen, whether it’s right, left, sane, insane — I don’t care.”
NC Senate approves bill making it a crime to wear a mask in public
Ahmed Jallow
Wed, May 15, 2024
An airline passenger waiting for his flight looks at his phone while wearing a protective face mask. Legislation making its way through the North Carolina legislature would make mask wearing in public illegal. (Photo by Carol Coelho/Getty Images)
The North Carolina Senate approved an amended version of House Bill 237 on Wednesday evening that would prohibit the wearing of masks in public.
The controversial bill, which would also increase criminal penalties for those who commit crimes while wearing a mask in public, comes in the wake of protests that have erupted on college campuses across the country in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
If it becomes law, the bill will also create a new offense for blocking traffic, a tactic used in some recent protests. The votes were cast 30 to 15 along party lines and it now heads back to the house for concurrence.
Sen. Buck Newton (R-Greene, Wayne and Wilson), who sponsored the Senate “committee substitute” for the bill, said it aims to reinstate a law that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Senate rejected three amendments to the bill proposed by Wake County Democratic Senators Sydney Batch, Lisa Grafstein and Jay Chaudhuri.
Amendments offered by Batch and Grafstein would have reinstated a health reason exemption and allowed mask-wearing unless the wearer was using the mask for criminal purposes.
Batch said as someone who was immunocompromised during medical treatment, she opposes any provision that makes mask-wearing more difficult for people with health concerns. “We are now trying to turn back time and ignore science and allow individuals who want to protect themselves or to protect their loved ones from wearing a mask,” said Batch.
“We talk a lot about freedoms in this chamber, I hear it all the time. I should have the freedom, my children should have the freedom and my husband should have the freedom to wear a mask in order to protect and save my life without fear of being arrested and charged with a class one misdemeanor, which is exactly what this bill would do.”
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this bill does, and how the law operates and it’s no wonder that so many folks are scared,” said Newton, questioning the motivations of those opposed to the bill.
“I think some of us are wondering what the real motivations are of folks on the other side of the house, scaring the bejesus out of everybody and making them feel like if they have a need at times to wear masks because they’re immunocompromised somehow, they’re going to get arrested.”
Laws dating back to the 1950s that were enacted, at least in part, as responses to groups like the Ku Klux Klan, prohibit wearing a mask in public in North Carolina, with exceptions. Those exceptions were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic to include people wearing masks for health reasons. Newton’s bill would remove that specific exception.
Newton said a Senate committee investigation found no documented arrests or prosecutions for wearing masks solely for health reasons under the previous law.
Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue of Wake County expressed concern that law enforcement could use the law as a pretext to pull over drivers. “If you got the mask on and it’s against the law to be wearing a mask, you’ve created probable cause for any police officer to stop you,” Blue said.
Advocates and organizations including Disability Rights NC, Emancipate NC, and the ACLU of North Carolina spoke out against the bill at a Tuesday committee hearing, criticizing both the mask ban and provisions that target protesters.
“This bill is part of a broader attack on democracy we are seeing at the state legislature, while lawmakers who support these attacks on the right to protest are also leading efforts to make it harder to vote and to participate in the legislative process,” said Elizabeth Barber, the policy director of the ACLU of North Carolina.
In a statement released Tuesday, the North Carolina NAACP decried the measure as “a dangerous bill that threatens the fundamental right to protest in North Carolina.”
“This legislation seeks to impose severe penalties on protesters, particularly targeting those who block traffic or wear masks,” the statement read. “By criminalizing these protest tactics, the bill aims to silence marginalized communities and stifle legitimate expressions of dissent.”
The bill now returns to the House for concurrence in Senate changes.
NC Senate passes bill restoring mask restrictions
Wed, May 15, 2024
An airline passenger waiting for his flight looks at his phone while wearing a protective face mask. Legislation making its way through the North Carolina legislature would make mask wearing in public illegal. (Photo by Carol Coelho/Getty Images)
The North Carolina Senate approved an amended version of House Bill 237 on Wednesday evening that would prohibit the wearing of masks in public.
The controversial bill, which would also increase criminal penalties for those who commit crimes while wearing a mask in public, comes in the wake of protests that have erupted on college campuses across the country in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
If it becomes law, the bill will also create a new offense for blocking traffic, a tactic used in some recent protests. The votes were cast 30 to 15 along party lines and it now heads back to the house for concurrence.
Sen. Buck Newton (R-Greene, Wayne and Wilson), who sponsored the Senate “committee substitute” for the bill, said it aims to reinstate a law that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Senate rejected three amendments to the bill proposed by Wake County Democratic Senators Sydney Batch, Lisa Grafstein and Jay Chaudhuri.
Amendments offered by Batch and Grafstein would have reinstated a health reason exemption and allowed mask-wearing unless the wearer was using the mask for criminal purposes.
Batch said as someone who was immunocompromised during medical treatment, she opposes any provision that makes mask-wearing more difficult for people with health concerns. “We are now trying to turn back time and ignore science and allow individuals who want to protect themselves or to protect their loved ones from wearing a mask,” said Batch.
“We talk a lot about freedoms in this chamber, I hear it all the time. I should have the freedom, my children should have the freedom and my husband should have the freedom to wear a mask in order to protect and save my life without fear of being arrested and charged with a class one misdemeanor, which is exactly what this bill would do.”
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this bill does, and how the law operates and it’s no wonder that so many folks are scared,” said Newton, questioning the motivations of those opposed to the bill.
“I think some of us are wondering what the real motivations are of folks on the other side of the house, scaring the bejesus out of everybody and making them feel like if they have a need at times to wear masks because they’re immunocompromised somehow, they’re going to get arrested.”
Laws dating back to the 1950s that were enacted, at least in part, as responses to groups like the Ku Klux Klan, prohibit wearing a mask in public in North Carolina, with exceptions. Those exceptions were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic to include people wearing masks for health reasons. Newton’s bill would remove that specific exception.
Newton said a Senate committee investigation found no documented arrests or prosecutions for wearing masks solely for health reasons under the previous law.
Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue of Wake County expressed concern that law enforcement could use the law as a pretext to pull over drivers. “If you got the mask on and it’s against the law to be wearing a mask, you’ve created probable cause for any police officer to stop you,” Blue said.
Advocates and organizations including Disability Rights NC, Emancipate NC, and the ACLU of North Carolina spoke out against the bill at a Tuesday committee hearing, criticizing both the mask ban and provisions that target protesters.
“This bill is part of a broader attack on democracy we are seeing at the state legislature, while lawmakers who support these attacks on the right to protest are also leading efforts to make it harder to vote and to participate in the legislative process,” said Elizabeth Barber, the policy director of the ACLU of North Carolina.
In a statement released Tuesday, the North Carolina NAACP decried the measure as “a dangerous bill that threatens the fundamental right to protest in North Carolina.”
“This legislation seeks to impose severe penalties on protesters, particularly targeting those who block traffic or wear masks,” the statement read. “By criminalizing these protest tactics, the bill aims to silence marginalized communities and stifle legitimate expressions of dissent.”
The bill now returns to the House for concurrence in Senate changes.
NC Senate passes bill restoring mask restrictions
Michael Hyland
Thu, May 16, 2024 a
NC Senate passes bill restoring mask restrictions
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – The state Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would bring back pre-COVID restrictions on wearing masks.
The bill, titled “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” passed along party lines by a margin of 30-15 and comes amid recent protests on college campuses. Republicans say the aim is to stop people from wearing masks to conceal their identities while committing crimes.
However, the bill goes further than that and would repeal an exception that’s been in state law since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that allows people to wear masks for health and safety reasons. Doing so would become illegal again.
“If I were not permitted to wear a mask in public, it would greatly limit which spaces I could visit. And, for me, this is an access issue,” Quisha Mallette, of the North Carolina Justice Center, told lawmakers as she urged them to oppose the measure.
During debate on the Senate floor, Democrats raised concerns about the impact on people who are immunocompromised who may want to continue to wear masks.
Sen. Buck Newton (R-Wilson) accused Democrats of trying “to scare the bejesus out of everybody.”
Referencing the recent protests, he said, “There’s a whole crowd of people running around out there taking advantage of this mask hangover from the pandemic.”
Republicans voted down three amendments Democrats offered, including one by Sen. Sydney Batch to allow an exception to wear masks for preventing the spread of contagious diseases.
“You’re plowing down this field without really knowing what all the implications are,” said Sen. Dan Blue (D-Wake).
The bill contains other provisions including increasing penalties for people who wear masks while committing other crimes and could lead to people who block streets or highways more than once being charged with a felony. It also makes protest organizers liable if people block streets and prevent emergency vehicles from getting to someone in need, resulting in injury or death.
The bill goes to the House next.
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