NC Senate Republicans vote to make it illegal to wear a medical mask in public

The bill sponsor, state Senator Buck Newton, claims protesters wear masks to hide their identity, calling it “craziness.” Rejecting repeated efforts to amend House Bill 237, the 30 Republicans in the North Carolina Senate struck down a state law “passed after the start of the Covid pandemic that explicitly allowed the public to wear masks […]

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The bill sponsor, state Senator Buck Newton, claims protesters wear masks to hide their identity, calling it “craziness.”

Rejecting repeated efforts to amend House Bill 237, the 30 Republicans in the North Carolina Senate struck down a state law “passed after the start of the Covid pandemic that explicitly allowed the public to wear masks for health reasons.”

On Wednesday, “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” passed the Senate 30-15. It had passed the House on May 3, 93-24; 21 Democrats voted with Republicans.

Sen. Buck Newton, 55, “told reporters that he believes some people are abusing the normalization of masks to hide their identities (emphasis added).” Belief. Not facts.

The “country lawyer” ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general in 2016. He represents state district 4 in eastern NC.

It’s OK to wear a mask in public if you’re wearing a constume.

It’s not OK if you are immune-comporised due to treatment for cancer or another disease.

Governor Roy Cooper is a Democrat. North Carolina was the last state to give its governor veto power. In 1997. Most states require a two-thirds vote to override a veto; North Carolina requires only three-fifths of the members of both legislative chambers.

“Even after we’ve dealt with a massive pandemic where 30,000 North Carolinians died of COVID, we are now trying to turn back time and ignore science and allow individuals who want to protect themselves, or to protect their loved ones, from wearing a mask,” Sen. Sydney Batch (D) said.

Rather than make a clear exception for health issues, the line from the GOP was “trust the cops.”

Republicans contended that the bill is intended to hold criminals accountable for attempting to disguise their identity while committing a crime, and that police will not be enforcing the ban on average citizens…

Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue, a Democrat, said that Republicans can’t ask citizens to “pick and choose” laws to follow. Democrats have cited concerns that removing the protection could have large-scale consequences for people who continue to choose to wear masks.

“Individuals will no longer be able to wear a mask in public for health and safety reasons. So it seems an absolute ban on wearing masks, and the thing about putting a ban on it, we ought not to give people the discretion to break the law,” Blue said. “The law is the law, and we ask people to observe all aspects of it.”

North Carolina is not alone, according to the ACLU. It’s like the 1960s again: conservative institutions move to quash protests.

• Florida charged “students arrested during a protest at the University of Florida [with] wearing masks in public.”
• Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wrote the state’s 14 public universities advising “that protesters could be charged with a felony under the state’s little-used anti-mask law, which carries penalties of between six to 18 months in prison.”
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and University of Texas-Austin administrators broke up pro-Palestinian protestors for wearing masks, breakingn “university rules that forbid students from concealing their identity to obstruct law enforcement.”

The ACLU warns that police and security forces advocate for facial recognition technology (FRT), which has an abysmal track record. Masks, of course, thwart FRT.

The push to normalize face recognition by security agencies threatens to turn our faces into the functional equivalent of license plates. Anti-mask laws are in effect a requirement to display those “plates” anytime one is in public. Humans are not cars.

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