New York’s Nassau County enacted a first-in-the-nation post-pandemic masks ban Wednesday — however don’t count on it to be rolled out statewide as Gov. Kathy Hochul threw off her masks of assist for a legislation focusing on face coverings.
The invoice, signed by Nassau Nation Government Bruce Blakeman, prohibits anybody over 16 years of age from sporting masks or different face coverings on public streets and property — with exceptions for well being and security causes or non secular customized.
Blakeman mentioned the ban — which drew protests when the Nassau County legislature accredited it final week — would defend the general public.
The lawmaker evoked the chaotic and hateful scenes of anti-Israel protests that lately gripped the Huge Apple.
“In New York Metropolis at Columbia College, individuals sporting masks had been engaged in antisemitic acts, engaged in violence, tried to abridge individuals’s constitutional rights,” he mentioned.
“They occupied buildings, they tried to occupy roads and bridges and disrupt individuals’s lives …. all whereas sporting a masks.”
Gov. Hochul beforehand instructed she would assist a partial masks ban for New York Metropolis’s subways amid a wave of disturbing antisemitic incidents by masked protesters.
Nonetheless, in an obvious about-face, the governor mentioned Wednesday that she as an alternative favors a legislation that targets hooligans who put on masks whereas committing crimes with harsher penalties — relatively than a preemptive ban.
“What I’ve mentioned is I feel we have to have an enhanced penalty for somebody who’s sporting a masks in the course of the fee of against the law,” Hochul mentioned when pressed by The Put up if she would signal a masks ban into legislation.
“I’m speaking about one thing totally different than only a flat-out ban. I’m speaking about individuals who go on a subway prepare sporting a masks, disguising themselves and threatening people and wreaking havoc — that’s what I need to get at. Or stroll right into a retailer sporting this type of masks and disguise themselves from the cameras which are there to seize any crimes which are dedicated.”
In the meantime, the Nassau County signing ceremony drew Jewish victims of antisemitism, who spoke in assist of unmasking hateful protesters.
Joseph Borgen recounted being crushed and pepper sprayed by masked “Palestinian thugs” throughout a 2021 conflict in Midtown — an incident that made him second guess sporting his yarmulke in public.
Borgen famous it took years for Manhattan prosecutors to indict one among his attackers, who solely ended up with a sweetheart plea deal.
“We couldn’t establish him 100% positively,” he mentioned. “If he wasn’t sporting a masks he would have been arrested with all the opposite thugs years in the past.”
Blakeman insisted that the ban wouldn’t simply curb crimes at protests. He argued that the legislation is a broader measure that will likely be used to clamp down on masked criminals who carjack, shoplift and rob banks.
The lawmaker additionally mentioned the motion has “bipartisan assist,” noting that Mayor Eric Adams needs the Metropolis Council to go such a ban.
“Nobody has the constitutional proper to cover their identification in public,” he mentioned.
New York repealed a virtually 200-year-old masks ban because the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
However a latest spate of antisemitic incidents because the battle in Gaza rages on — together with a masked hooligan demanding that “Zionists” increase their fingers on a crowded subway prepare — has prompted Jewish leaders to name for reinstating the ban.
Doing so would assist maintain hateful anti-Israel protesters accountable for violent or threatening habits, they argued.
Critics, nevertheless, blasted the legislation as an infringement on rights.
Susan Gottehrer, Nassau County regional director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, mentioned Blakeman selected to chase a tradition battle over defending his residents’ rights and well-being.
“We’ll say it once more: masks defend individuals who specific political views which are controversial,” she mentioned in a press release. “Officers must be supporting New Yorkers’ proper to voice their views, not fueling widespread doxxing and threatening arrests.”
State Sen. Iwen Chu (D-Brooklyn) agreed unhealthy habits hidden behind masks ought to have penalties — however mentioned she frightened that the Nassau ban would result in discrimination and hate towards those that put on masks for well being causes, particularly these from Asian cultures hit by SARS and COVID-19.
“Many Asians over the world have adopted this masks tradition and sense of public security as a societal duty to forestall well being crises from spreading,” she mentioned in a press release.
“Laws like this will likely result in anti-Asian hate and discrimination in direction of the masks wanted inhabitants because of well being, tradition, non secular causes.”
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