The North Carolina state Senate has voted to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, including for health reasons.
Republican supporters of the ban argue it will aid law enforcement in identifying protesters who use masks to conceal their identities. They claim that demonstrators are exploiting COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide during anti-Israel protests across the country and at North Carolina universities.
The bill also repeals an existing exception that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons. This exception has been in place since the early stages of the pandemic.
House Bill 237 passed along party lines Wednesday with 30 senators voting in favor, 15 opposed, and five absent.
Democrats expressed concerns about the bill’s impact on immunocompromised individuals and those undergoing treatments like chemotherapy who might still need to wear masks, WRAL News reported.
State Sen. Sydney Batch (D), a cancer survivor, shared her personal experience with her fellow senators, explaining how her family wore masks to protect her weakened immune system during treatment.
Mr. Batch and other Democrats suggested amendments to the bill to allow police to target masked protesters while maintaining legal protections for health-related mask-wearing. These proposals were rejected, according to WRAL.
GOP Sen. Buck Newton dismissed these concerns, saying law enforcement would exercise “good common sense” when applying the law. He noted that no one saw “granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID,” the Associated Press reported.
North Carolina’s statutes on masking date back to the 1950s. The original public masking ban aimed to curb Ku Klux Klan activities.
Under the new bill, if a person is arrested for protesting while masked, the classification of their crime would be elevated by one class, either from a misdemeanor to a felony or within felony classes.
The bill now heads to Governor Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper, a Democrat, has the option to veto it. However, the North Carolina Republican Party holds a supermajority and can override the expected veto.
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