A poll published last week highlights the sharp divide between what New Yorkers want and what advocates demand. The survey found that 75 percent of New York voters support banning face-masking as a disguise to terrorize, hurt people, and commit crimes.

Two such bans, one Democratic and one Republican, are making their way through the state legislature—something Governor Kathy Hochul neglected to mention in her recent State of the State address. Nonetheless, opponents of New York’s ban insist that such laws offer no public-safety benefits, and that they will prevent ordinary citizens from masking for health. These arguments are not only wrong; as the recent poll shows, they’re also out of step.

Indeed, the public is smart to support mask bans. The rise in masking is associated with the nearly fourfold increase in U.S. anti-Semitism last year, and the tripling of incidences of anti-Jewish harassment in New York. Masking has also limited police officers, who struggle to identify and arrest masked offenders for infractions from hate crimes to carjacking. And anonymity has been shown to embolden offenders.

Masked protesters are also trickier to prosecute, as Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg found out. Last spring, he dismissed for lack of evidence 31 of the 46 trespass arrestees who vandalized Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. Bragg cited prosecutors’ inability to identify the radicals, who obscured their faces behind surgical masks, hoods, and keffiyehs.

Still, despite public support for mask bans and strong evidence for their effectiveness, some still oppose them. Manhattan assemblyman Harvey Epstein and New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman recently published an op-ed decrying the bans. Instead of identifying concrete issues, though, they make objections that could apply to almost any law. They suggest that there could be selective enforcement, for instance, or that the ban could inspire anti-mask vigilantes to attack anyone wearing a mask. And they claim, without evidence, that mask bans are racist and criminalize gender-nonconforming people.

Worst of all, Epstein and Lieberman warn bans won’t protect Jewish New Yorkers. “In fact,” they write, “mask bans might be just as likely to backfire and increase antisemitism by reinforcing antisemitic tropes about special treatment.” This argument, made by not just Epstein and Lieberman but groups like the NYCLU and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, puts the onus on Jews to tolerate being targeted by masked attackers.

Those opposing bans even argue that a masked assailant is a safer assailant. Michal Richardson, co-founder of Jews for Mask Rights, told Nassau County’s legislature she fears contracting Covid. “I too worry about antisemitism,” she intoned, “but if I were harassed, I would be safer if my assailant were masked.”

Perhaps Richardson has never contemplated what it means to be attacked. Would Paul Kessler, killed in May by a protester who struck him with a megaphone, have been “safer” if his attacker wore an N95? Would Richardson feel better about Kristallnacht if the Nazis had hidden their faces behind keffiyehs?

The reality is that mask bans prevent and respond to crime and harassment. They do not stop law-abiding citizens from masking for genuine reasons of health, religious observance, or revelry. For proof, look to Long Island’s Nassau County. In August, Nassau enacted the Mask Transparency Act. Within weeks, police arrested two men wearing ski masks. One was carrying a concealed 14-inch knife. The other had jumped into a woman’s backyard, trying to break into her home. Cops also arrested an agitator menacing a synagogue while wearing a keffiyeh scarf to conceal his face.

Those who’ve dealt with the reality of hate crimes and violence don’t have time to indulge in fantasies. Last week’s poll was commissioned by #UnMaskHateNY—a coalition that encompasses civil rights and religious members, including the NAACP New York State Conference, the National Urban League, the Anti-Defamation League, and prominent black pastors. These groups get it: smart mask-ban legislation will keep everyone safer.

Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images

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