Early in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, a man was violently thrown in front of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan. According to Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman from the Bronx with his eyes on higher office, the alleged perpetrator was—unsurprisingly—wearing a mask.
“Wearing a mask for the purpose of committing crimes against innocent New Yorkers or for the purpose of intimidating and harassing Jewish students on college campuses should be strictly prohibited by state law,” Torres posted on X.
As it happens, New York State had the oldest anti-masking law in the nation but repealed it during the pandemic. Torres is correct in calling for its reinstatement. He’s also right to connect the state legislature’s failure to do so to the abuse of Jewish college students by pro-Hamas fanatics. The State Assembly considered two bills to bring the ban back last year, but didn’t act amid pushback from left-wing groups.
Despite the state’s dithering, it has become obvious that the repeal of anti-masking laws has had disastrous consequences for cities like New York. Last month, health insurance executive Brian Thompson was brutally executed by a masked man who quickly fled the city. That murder took place in the city’s busiest neighborhood—Midtown Manhattan—in front of witnesses on a Wednesday morning. But had the suspect in the shooting not lowered his mask to briefly flirt with a hostel clerk, he might still be on the lam.
Not so long ago, the shooter wouldn’t have been able to cover his face in a coffee shop and on the streets of New York without arousing suspicion. Covid-19, however, made it commonplace to conceal our identities in public. The pandemic may be long over, but the acceptance of public masking lingers. And whether by making it easier for murderers to navigate a city anonymously, petty criminals to shoplift with impunity, or disorderly protesters to intimidate those around them, our tolerance for face coverings has made us less safe.
We’ve seen this problem repeatedly play out on our streets, on mass transit, and in our schools, such as when a mob of anti-Israel protesters seized a Columbia University building last April. They took two maintenance workers hostage in the process before finally being ousted by police the next day. Dozens were arrested but, in June, the Manhattan district attorney’s office dropped the charges against nearly 70 percent of them. Why? Because it would have been “extremely difficult” to win convictions, one prosecutor explained, partly because some of the agitators wore surgical masks, hoods, and keffiyehs, making it hard to identify which individuals took which actions.
This was an easily avoidable problem. Anti-masking laws have a long history in America; states as culturally and politically varied as Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia have had anti-masking legislation on their books for decades. They often originated at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was intimidating and attacking blacks, Catholics, and other minorities.
The intent of these anti-masking laws was clear: to dismantle the ability of Klan members to operate unseen and unpunished. They boosted the ability of law enforcement to identify and prosecute suspects in hate crimes and public-disorder infractions, and they helped reduce the Klan’s influence.
And just as Klan members used white hoods to hide their identities and terrorize their targets, today’s homegrown militants are using keffiyehs, Guy Fawkes masks, bandanas, and other intimidating face covers. The activists staging the pro-Hamas protests that have proliferated on college campuses and city streets conceal their faces to make it impossible to determine who is engaged in violence, intimidation, and property destruction.
New York City alone experienced 2,000 anti-Israel protests in the first six months after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel; some involved more than 10,000 people illegally blocking bridges and other major infrastructure.
These marches and demonstrations often lead to attacks on synagogues, community centers, and Jewish-owned businesses, and cities across the country are struggling to limit this surge in antisemitism. There were more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the US in a year’s time after the October 7 attack, and as with the KKK a century ago, the perpetrators often wore masks.
And just as mask bans were effective against Klan members, denying them the ability to hide their identities and thus escape justice, they would likewise work against today’s violent bigots and criminals. It’s not just thieves, gangsters, Antifa, and supporters of Islamist groups who have taken advantage of America’s newfound leniency toward masking in public; members of far-right organizations like the Patriot Front also use masks to conceal their identities.
Stripped of anonymity and the menacing power of the keffiyeh or a balaclava, militants of all stripes are less likely to engage in criminal behavior. Yet many jurisdictions let them mask up with impunity. Just look at the thousands of chanting protesters who flooded Washington, DC, last June, defacing statues and trashing Lafayette Square, across from the White House. US Park Police officers and Secret Service agents tried to apprehend the vandals, but demonstrators wearing face covers who couldn’t be identified fended them off and no arrests were made.
Hannah Meyers, my colleague at the Manhattan Institute, testified to the Texas legislature that mask bans can also work against crimes such as carjacking and shoplifting that have become harder to solve since masking became accepted—and often mandated—during the pandemic. For example, Philadelphia police called masking “the number one obstacle” to dealing with a surge of murders in 2020.
Some jurisdictions are taking note. The District of Columbia implemented an omnibus crime bill that included an anti-masking provision aimed at combating carjacking and other street crimes. And New York’s Nassau County made public masking a misdemeanor. Soon after, Nassau police arrested a person wearing a ski mask in the summer heat who, it turned out, was carrying a 14-inch knife. They’ve also used the ban to arrest someone wearing a keffiyeh who was part of a mob in front of a synagogue.
As a free-speech advocate, I must acknowledge the reasonable concerns that anti-mask laws could infringe on free expression. But these are not novel issues, and the constitutionality of masking bans has been repeatedly upheld. Courts uniformly affirm that the public’s right to safety and the state’s ability to enforce criminal laws can supersede individual rights to anonymity. New York’s anti-masking law itself survived a legal challenge in 2004. Indeed, far from infringing on First Amendment freedoms, anti-masking laws are essential to preserving the rights to assemble, to petition for redress of grievances, and otherwise to express ourselves while preventing intimidation and harassment.
Critics also argue that the laws discriminate against disabled people, and two anonymous plaintiffs suffering from various diseases filed a federal lawsuit against Nassau County’s law in August. Unsurprisingly, that lawsuit was quickly dismissed; judges often must assess the sincerity of claims relating to health and safety gear or religious garb, so they’re well-equipped to make similar determinations in mask-ban cases. And there’s plenty of room for tailoring the laws to local conditions, such as allowing masks for Halloween or masquerade balls. Louisiana’s anti-masking law even makes an exception for Mardi Gras.
It doesn’t take a degree in criminology to recognize that besides a tiny minority who cover their mouths for bona fide reasons, people who mask in public are up to no good. Properly conceived, these laws can help thwart criminals who cloak their identities not to express themselves, but as a means to terrorize and silence others. And they can help maintain a society where individuals are accountable for their conduct.
Ilya Shapiro is the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. He also writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack.
