North Carolina may ban face masks for medical reasons in public

The North Carolina state Senate voted Wednesday along party lines to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.

Republican supporters of the ban said it would help authorities crack down on mask-wearing protesters. They say protesters are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestinian protests across the country and at North Carolina universities.

The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that has been state law since the early stages of the pandemic and that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.

Thirty senators voted in favor House Bill 237while 15 were opposed and five were absent.

Democrats have raised concerns about the bill, especially for those who are immunocompromised or those who want to continue wearing masks during cancer treatments. WRAL News reported.

State Senator Sydney Batch (D) is a cancer survivor and shared with her fellow senators how her family wore masks to protect her and her weakened immune system during treatment.

She and other Democrats proposed ways to change the bill so that police could still crack down on protesters but continue to have legal protections for health issues, but they were shot down, the outlet reported.

Republican Senator Buck Newton brushed off the concerns, saying no one saw “Grandma getting arrested at Walmart pre-COVID” and thinks law enforcement will use “common sense” when enforcing the law, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

The AP noted that the state’s general mask-wearing statutes date back to the 1950s in an attempt to restrict membership in the Ku Klux Klan, when the state passed a public mask-wearing ban.

Under accountIf a person is arrested for protesting while masked, it would raise the classification of a person’s crime, whether misdemeanor or felony, to a higher class.

Now it goes to Governor Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper, a Democrat, could veto the bill, but the North Carolina Republican Party has a supermajority and could override the expected veto.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story