Think mask bans are about keeping people safe? Think again.

In mid-June, seemingly overnight, the idea of banning masks dominated public discourse. North Carolina lawmakers passed a mask ban bill (overriding a veto by the governor). Just a few days later, New York’s governor spoke out in favor of banning masks on the subway — an idea backed up by the mayor of her state’s largest city.

Much of this discussion, fueled by the media and its proponents, linked the mask bans to an incident on an NYC subway car on June 10 where a man, leading a group of protesters, chanted “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist” to passengers.

Makes sense, right? A scary incident on a subway car involving protestors, some of whom were masked (though not the man leading the chant), led to public discussion.

Except that these things really aren’t connected at all. The subway incident was just one link in a long chain of events going back more than half a decade in an effort to push for laws aimed at making protesting more difficult, if not outright illegal.

Mask bans have long been a segment of these anti-protest laws, even before the pandemic. This current wave begins with protests against the North Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. The protests began in the spring of 2016 and continued until February 2017. As a direct result of these protests, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, and a flood of alarmist press reports about “black-clad antifa members,” what the ACLU called a “flood” of anti-protest bills made their way into legislatures across the country, and into Congress.

Among these bills was one in Missouri that created the crime of “concealing a person’s identity…by means of a robe, mask, or other disguise” if they’re protesting. Congress dropped the mask, metaphorically speaking, on their version of a mask ban by calling it the “Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018.”

These masking bills are, minus some pandemic-era language about health exceptions, more or less identical to the ones being put forward now. Except instead of black-clad antifa members or people locking themselves to drilling equipment, there’s a new boogeyman: pro-Palestine protestors. This year’s North Carolina bill, the Associated Press said straightforwardly, “was brought forth in part as a response to campus protests on the war in Gaza.”

Despite the governor’s comments, efforts to ban masks in New York have absolutely nothing to do with the June subway incident. They had started a month before in early May, when two different anti-mask bills were introduced in the state legislature — at the exact same time the Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018 was reintroduced in Congress.

What was happening then? Campus protests and encampments. Masking was common in those spaces, for health reasons and because many protestors were scared of getting doxxed — a well-founded fear, as so-called “doxxing trucks” were frequent visitors to protest sites.

This masking received pushback from tabloids, right-wing lawmakers, and Israel supporters. In late April, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went as far as to call for campuses to “outlaw” masks.

For some lawmakers, this climate presented the perfect opportunity to fulfill their long-running wish to make life more difficult for protestors by banning masks.

New York Assemblyman Mike Reilly, who introduced a mask ban bill in May 2024, said on X that “Republicans have been advocating to do this since 2021.” He tied his bill explicitly to what he called “the chaotic and sometimes violent protests at Columbia and NYU.”

As more anti-mask bills were introduced, the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute decided to take up the cause. The Manhattan Institute, led by its senior fellow Christopher Rufo, has been a prime mover in what it describes as “the fight against critical race theory in American institutions.”

Rufo himself had been criticizing campus protests, decrying “masked Antifa-style protesters occupying campuses” in early May. So it was no surprise when a month later, after the first rush of mask ban bills, the Manhattan Institute introduced model legislation, giving guidelines for any other state that wanted to follow New York or North Carolina’s lead.

The Manhattan Institute’s brief, then, was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the fallout from the subway controversy — which it did, receiving a mention in a June 12 New York Post story headlined “Jewish leaders call for new NYC mask ban after explosion of antisemitic protests by mobs with hidden faces.”

These new anti-mask bills differ in their particulars. In some, masking itself is unlawful without explicit permission from the police. In others, there are weak health exemptions, dependent on the intent of the wearer, though the law does not mention how that intent would be determined.

But all of them are aimed explicitly at protestors. The federal one, as mentioned, has “antifa” in the name of the bill. The North Carolina one makes its intent clear by adding two other protest-related measures in the same law: increasing the penalty for impeding a road during a demonstration, and creating civil liability for demonstration organizers if the demonstration “obstructs an emergency vehicle.”

One of the New York bills was tied to protests by its sponsor in the assembly. Its sponsor in the state senate, as well, explicitly said in his justification memo that the bill was due to “the recent surge in mass protests at colleges and universities.” The author of a second New York bill told USA Today this week that the legislation was inspired by people in “pro-Palestinian protests.”

The dynamics here are clear. Social movements that are at all effective, whether against an oil company, white nationalists, or a war costing over 30,000 lives, will receive backlash. Anti-mask bills, and other anti-protest measures, will be aimed at whoever the current target is. Democratic lawmakers, civil rights groups, and others who have signed onto this current iteration would do well to remember that they’re pushing forward an agenda that will have them in its crosshairs soon enough.

If you’re moved to oppose mask bans, now is a crucial time. If the current ones can be stopped in the legislative phase, there’s a good chance legislators will realize they’re unpopular and drop the idea. If you live (or even visit) New York, COVID Advocacy NY has a fantastic toolkit with a variety of suggested actions. If you’re not, Mask Bans America has a national #StopMaskBans campaign that you can find out about here.

Shawn Setaro is a reporter who has written for Complex, Genius, the Atlantic, Vibe, GQ, Forbes, and more. He was the writer and reporter on the Spotify/Complex podcasts ‘Infamous’ and ‘Complex Subject,’ and is the author of the book ‘Dummy Boy: Tekashi 6ix9ine and the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods,’ (Kingston Imperial, 2021).