Politicians across the US – from North Carolina, to New York State to Chicago – are pushing for mask bans. We all have a responsibility to fight this attack on our rights, our bodily autonomy, our privacy and our health. If you stopped masking, now is a good time to reengage with this practice in public spaces, and particularly in political gatherings.  If you are organizing an event, please require and distribute high quality masks as visible expressions of solidarity. 

Take Action:

1. Wear a mask. To prevent COVID and Long COVID, EVERYONE should be masking in public with good-filtering, close-fitting respirator masks. We are all at risk ourselves, and we all pose risks to other people. So, wear an N95 mask in public spaces. If you are organizing an event – particularly a political event – require and distribute high quality masks for all. If you have stopped masking in public, this is a great time to re-engage the practice. Our opposition to this fascism must be made visible. There is safety in numbers. We keep us safe. 
2. If you live in North Carolina, call your state representatives and state senators and use NC Megaphone’s tool to email all the State House and Senate representatives at once. Tell them mask bans are dangerous and unconstitutional. 
3. If you live outside North Carolina, call the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill Chambers of Commerce. Tell them you will not be traveling to North Carolina so long as they continue to consider mask bans. You can use the NC Megaphone tool above to do the same.
4. If you live in Chicago, call and email Alderman Brian Hopkins who leads the committee that will consider a proposed mask ban by Alderman Lopez, and your own alderman and tell them that you oppose it in its entirety.
5. If you live in or frequent New York State, call 518-474-8390 (press 1 to leave a message, 2 to speak with a person) and email Governor Hochul to express your opposition to mask bans.  If you live in or visit New York City, call and email Mayor Adams to say the same and express why his comments on masking are harmful.  Find and contact your state senator and assembly rep to tell them you oppose mask bans. If you are Jewish, sign and share this open letter. Follow @covidadvocacyny for more details. Note: There is an additional mask ban bill that has been introduced in Nassau County. Emergency action toolkit here.
6. In every state, call your own elected officials. Ask if they have heard of any plans to introduce mask bans in your state, and register your dissent. Tell them: “mask bans are a dangerous violation of our rights. We need mask requirements in healthcare, not mask bans which will make public space even more unsafe and inaccessible.”
7. Connect with your local mask blocs or other local groups supporting COVID prevention.
8. Forward this message to your community groups and discuss mask bans with your family, friends, and community. Email us at info@peoplescdc.org if you would like more materials.

Background: Politicians are pushing mask bans

In mid June New York Governor Kathy Horchul announced in a CNN interview that she is considering a ban on masking in New York State, following New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s suggestion that protesters should no longer be allowed to protect themselves and others by masking. Hochul’s remark alluded to masked pro-Palestine protesters – marking a new direct connection between anti-public health repression and repression of Palestine solidarity work. This comes just as North Carolina is nearly finished supercharging its law against masking, setting a precedent that is likely to have far-reaching implications for people trying to take care of their health across the United States. 

The state of North Carolina has had a law on the books for years that criminalizes mask wearing. In 2020, they correctly amended their rule to include an exemption for “any person wearing a mask for the purpose of ensuring the physical health or safety of others.” However, this exemption is currently being undone. In mid-May, North Carolina’s Senate tried to pass a bill to remove this exemption. In the face of significant public opposition, North Carolina’s House of Representatives rejected the Senate’s version. On June 12, a  “compromise” bill that included language ”to ensure that individuals who have legitimate health concerns can wear a surgical or medical-grade mask in public” was passed by both legislatures. North Carolina’s governor vetoed the bill, but on June 27th, the legislature overrode his veto: North Carolina’s “compromise” mask ban is now law.

This “compromise” is a bad law.The changes it introduces do not go far enough to protect individuals’ interest in masking for their health. Other changes actually make this version worse than the previous Senate version.

The earlier version entirely removed exemption #6, which protected “any person wearing a mask for the purpose of ensuring the physical health or safety of the wearer or others.” As a “compromise,” the current law includes exemption #6 but has removed the phrase “for the purpose of ensuring the physical health or safety of the wearer or others.” In its place, the exemption is for “preventing the spread of contagious disease.” As noted by North Carolina’s legislative counsel, the earlier version meant that “individuals would no longer be able to wear masks in public for health or safety reasons.” Yet, the new law, by also removing the “physical health and safety” language, is effectively the same as the earlier version: individuals will have a more limited ability to wear masks in public.

North Carolina’s new law negates an important individual right. People have a right to self defense, including a right to protect their health. Such a right is significantly broader than an interest in “preventing the spread of contagious disease.” For example, breathing wildfire smoke is damaging to your health but has nothing to do with contagious disease.

Moreover, the new law gives every person in North Carolina the legal right to ask those around them to unmask—something we haven’t seen anywhere in the US to-date. Under the 2020 version of North Carolina’s anti-mask law, law enforcement officers could request that people remove their masks in certain situations, even if they were relying on the health and safety exemption. The new law extends that power, allowing “the owner or occupant of public or private property where the wearer is present” to request that the wearer “temporarily remove” their mask. This rule threatens to amplify the practice of “mask shaming” by giving employers, colleagues, and “occupants of public property” a legal basis for demanding that people wearing medical masks show them their faces. In fact, before the law was even passed,  a stage 4 cancer patient at a gas station was intentionally coughed on by another customer, who told her that wearing a mask in public was illegal.

Not only does this rule provide a dangerous ground for harassment, it makes public spaces unsafe for people trying to avoid COVID and other viruses, particularly medically vulnerable people. There is no safe amount of time to unmask, particularly as ventilation conditions and viral load can vary. People may be asked to unmask multiple times, further increasing risk.

As people in North Carolina face this supercharged anti-masking regime, mask restrictions are now being pushed elsewhere and across party lines, like New York state. Last month, the Ohio Attorney General advised public universities that student protestors who wear masks could be charged with felonies under an archaic anti-mask law. And of course, just this week, the Governor of New York told CNN she was looking into whether the state could reinstate its own 200-year-old anti-masking law, which it had repealed in 2020. Across the country, police have been harassing people wearing masks on campus using a variety of legal justifications.

These legislations and legislative attempts aim to set a new precedent for  the right-wing agenda, as evidenced by their attention to ban mask mandates in healthcare in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document co-signed/supported by hundreds of far-right and Trump-allied organizations. These same repressive forces have made inroads in dismantling reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare options. Their attention is now also focusing on those practicing community care and bodily autonomy by wearing masks.

How did we get here? 

Although these fascistic mask ban policies have been kick-started by the far-right, many police officials and some elected Democrats, too, are joining team “Far Right” to sacrifice public health at the altar of increased surveillance. Democratic New York City mayor Eric Adams has been urging business owners to require customers to lower their protective medical masks upon entry as a crime-prevention technique, claiming that refusal to unmask “should cause … alarm” and now suggests he favors outright bans on masking in some situations as well. And Democratic Alderman Raymond Lopez of Chicago’s 15th Ward has now submitted a proposal with similar language to the North Caroline bill, to increase penalties on any protesters arrested while wearing a mask. His staff told us that there is no plan to exempt medical masks. Many other Democrats – through silence on this issue and through broader inaction on public health – have helped to institutionalize an anti-public health agenda, reinforce structural ableism, and further isolate anyone who wants to avoid a preventable, still deadly, and often disabling virus. 

Not only a terrifying threat to all our health and safety as well as our rights to privacy, mask bans violate our Constitutional rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are an egregious overstep on behalf of right wing forces to erase and to criminalize our efforts to care for ourselves and others. It’s no coincidence that these bans began in the US South, specifically targeting, intimidating, and harming Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples.

Mask bans also serve short-term corporate interests, which center profits over the lives of workers and consumers.  In-N-Out burger publicly banned its employees from wearing masks, seemingly because an inability to  “service with a smile” due to mask-wearing meant revenue loss. Hospital chains dangerously removed mask mandates in part due to slowdown in elective procedures caused by COVID testing requirements and mask-wearing policies.

But there is a lot we can do 

We all have a responsibility to fight this right-wing agenda, to protect everyone’s right to participate in public life without making ourselves and our community sick.  If you have stopped masking, now is a good time to reengage with this practice in public spaces, and particularly in political gatherings.  If you are organizing an event, please require and distribute high quality masks for all as visible expression of solidarity.

 

We must protect our right to health, bodily autonomy, privacy, and political expression.