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Reason
Reason
Politics
Eugene Volokh

Are Laws Restricting Mask-Wearing in Public Constitutional?

[1.] Some places have recently enacted restrictions on wearing masks in public. They generally stem from three related rationales:

  1. People's wearing masks makes it harder for the police to identify who committed some crime: trespass, vandalism, assault, and more. That's especially true when there are many people wearing the same masks, and a masked rock-thrower (for instance) can feel safe that it will be hard to identify him among the other mask-wearers.
  2. Because of this, wearing masks can embolden would-be criminals.
  3. And because of this, wearing masks can therefore be intimidating to bystanders, precisely because the bystanders will think that the mask-wearers might be willing to attack them with less risk of being caught and punished.

Of course, all places have laws that ban trespass, vandalism, assault, and similar crimes. But the premise of the mask laws is that those laws are insufficient, precisely because masking can help evade detection for people who violate those laws.

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