Important Takeaways:

• Suburban New York officials looking to stop violent protesters from obscuring their identities have banned wearing masks in public except for health or religious reasons.
• The county’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the ban on face coverings on Aug. 5. Legislator Howard Kopel said lawmakers were responding to “antisemitic incidents, often perpetrated by those in masks” since the Oct. 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war.
• The law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for anyone in Nassau to wear a face covering to hide their identity in public. It exempts people who wear masks “for health, safety, religious or cultural purposes, or for the peaceful celebration of a holiday or similar religious or cultural event for which masks or facial coverings are customarily worn.”
• Blakeman said that while mask-wearing campus protesters were the impetus for the ban, he sees the new law as a tool to fight everyday crime as well.
• Nassau County acted after New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said in June that she was considering a ban on face masks in the New York City subway system. She did not follow up with a plan.

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