RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are moving forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred in part by antiwar demonstrations in Gaza that included masked protesters camped on university campuses.
The legislation passed the Senate on Wednesday on a 30-15 vote along party lines, despite multiple attempts by state Senate Democrats to change the bill. The bill, which would increase penalties for those who wear a mask while committing a crime, including arrested protesters, could still be changed when it returns to the House.
Opponents of the bill say it puts the health of those who wear masks for safety reasons at risk. But supporters of the legislation say it is a necessary response to demonstrations, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that have turned into police clashes and arrests. The bill also further criminalizes blocking roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which occurred during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.
“It’s time the madness was put to rest, at least slowed down, if not stopped,” said the Republican senator from Wilson County. Buck Newtonwho introduced the bill, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
Most of the resistance against the bill centered on removing health and safety exemptions for wearing a mask in public. O health exemption has been added at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, on largely bipartisan lines.
This strikeout 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, according to a 2012 book by Washington University in St. Louis sociology professor David Cunningham.
Since the pandemic, masks have become a partisan flashpoint — and the debate in the Senate over whether the law would make it illegal to wear masks for health purposes was no different.
Democratic lawmakers repeated their unease about how removing protections for people who choose to wear masks for their health could put immunocompromised North Carolinians at risk of breaking the law. The legislative team said during a Tuesday Committee that wearing masks for health purposes would violate the law.
“You are turning caring people into criminals with this bill,” Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus of Mecklenburg County said on the Senate floor. “It’s a bad law.”
Simone Hetherington, an immunocompromised person who spoke during the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday, said masking is one of the only ways to protect yourself from illness and worries that the law will stop the practice.
“We live in different times and I get harassment,” Hetherington said of mask-wearing. “It just takes one bad actor.”
But Republican lawmakers continued to express doubt that anyone would get in legal trouble for wearing a mask due to health concerns, saying authorities and prosecutors would use discretion to charge someone. Newton said the bill focuses on criminalizing masks solely for the purpose of hiding someone’s identity.
“I smell politics on the other side of the aisle when they scare people to death over a bill that will only criminalize people who are trying to hide their identity so they can do something wrong,” Newton said.
Three Democratic senators proposed amendments to maintain the health care exemption and exclude hate groups from masking, but Senate Republicans used a procedural mechanism to block them without a vote.
Future changes to the bill could be a possibility, but ultimately it would be up to the House, Newton told reporters after the vote. Robeson County Republican Sen. Danny Britt also said during a previous committee that he expected “some adjustments.”
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 this” but members wanted to crack down on people wearing masks while committing crimes.
The masking bill will likely pass through a few committees before reaching the House floor, which could take a week or two, Hall said.
