Nearly 300 Jewish Leaders, 100 Organizations Oppose New York Mask Bans
Today, Jews for Mask Rights, alongside the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the New York Doctors Coalition, delivered our open letter to New York lawmakers calling on them to reject any legislation banning masks.
Nearly 300 Jewish leaders oppose mask bans. More than 2,200 Jewish individuals signed our open letter, including 75 clergy members and 70 leaders of Jewish organizations. We collected all signatures solely through word-of-mouth and unpaid social media outreach.
This was just our first milestone. If you’d like to add your name, you can do so here.
Below is the full press release from NYCLU:
NEW YORK, NY – Today, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Jews for Mask Rights, and New York Doctors Coalition sent letters to Governor Hochul, President Pro Tempore Stewart-Cousins, and Speaker Heastie calling on them to ensure no legislation banning masks advances in New York State this session. The letters detail how banning masks threatens New Yorkers’ health and safety; foments antisemitism; gives police a new pretextual reason to stop, surveil, and scrutinize New Yorkers; and undermines protections for those engaged in political protest.
Nearly 100 organizations, 250 healthcare providers, and 300 Jewish leaders signed on in support of the letters. Organizational signatories include civil rights and racial justice advocates, health care providers, public health experts, Jewish and AAPI organizations, defenders of the First Amendment and the right to protest, criminal legal system reform organizations, public defenders, LGBTQIA+ and HIV/AIDs advocates, disability justice organizations, immigrants’ rights advocates, environmental justice organizations, privacy advocates, and more.
“Mask bans are touted as an easy fix to antisemitism, but they are an unrelated, regressive policy that protects no one,” said Michal Richardson, co-founder of Jews for Mask Rights. “Mask bans will not solve antisemitism, but they will further stigmatize a simple, effective health tool and endanger marginalized groups. Antisemitism is real and complex, but actual safety comes from education and solidarity, not from compromising the health and civil liberties of all New Yorkers.”
“Whether it’s public health experts, Jewish leaders, or civil rights advocates, New Yorkers across the board are saying loudly and clearly that mask bans have no place in our state,” said Allie Bohm, Senior Policy Counsel at the NYCLU. “Criminalizing masks puts New Yorkers’ health and safety at risk, opens the floodgates for selective and racially-biased enforcement, threatens to exile some people with disabilities and those who care for them from society, and undermines protections for people engaging in political protest. With only one week before Trump — a man who has expressly promised to retaliate against political opponents — takes office, New York lawmakers should be doing everything in their power to safeguard our rights.”
“Mask bans put lives at risk and unfairly target communities most impacted by COVID-19 and respiratory pollutants, such as Black and Brown New Yorkers and those with compromised immune systems or chronic illnesses,” said Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS, primary care and HIV physician, Executive Director, Health Justice, former Assistant Commissioner at NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “Everyone deserves the freedom to protect themselves and their communities—we need policies that care for all New Yorkers, not ones that cause harm.”
“Sometimes we see an event that we haven’t seen before and might never see again, and legislators jump to push a bill making it a crime,” said Richard Gottfried, who retired from the New York State Assembly in December 2022, after representing part of Manhattan for 52 years. “It’s rarely a good idea. The mask ban is not a good idea.”
“Masks are a critical public health tool that help protect people from COVID-19, as well as other contagious diseases, wildfire smoke, pollution, allergens, and other health concerns,” said a spokesperson for COVID Advocacy NY. “Everyone has a right to wear a mask. A mask ban would put the lives and health of all New Yorkers at risk.”
“Jews For Racial & Economic Justice is appalled by the claim that banning masks is in service of Jewish safety,” said Elana Levin, member at Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. “To be clear, any mask ban is a blow to public health in our state and opens up additional avenues for racial profiling and police harassment. Mask bans — exemption or not — discriminate against anyone who cannot afford to get sick, and they advance a broader anti-democratic effort to criminalize protest.”
“While the authors of this bill claim that a mask ban will keep Jews safe, we believe it will do the opposite,” said Jillian Lipman, National Organizer with Bend the Arc: Jewish Action for Bend the Arc: Jewish Action’s Long Island and Riverdale chapters. “A mask ban will not stop antisemitism, but it will harm the health of our state and likely lead to increased policing of Black and Brown New Yorkers. The only way to dismantle antisemitism, and all forms of hatred, is through solidarity and shared safety.”
“The last thing anyone should want is police officers or others harassing people who are wearing masks, especially immunocompromised or other disabled people who are just trying to protect their health and those of people around them, after all,” said Joe Rappaport, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. “This would inevitably happen even with an exemption for masks worn by people for health reasons. Mask bans would protect no one.”
“Mask bans do not increase public safety and instead increase the criminalization of already-marginalized communities, further endangering chronically ill and disabled communities,” said Emi Kane, Director of Long COVID Justice. “The recent fires in California make it all the more clear how devastating and shortsighted it would be to create barriers to the use of masks as essential public health tools and mitigation strategies for everything from air quality events to disabling airborne illnesses.”
“The criminalization of masks is antithetical to public health and community safety,” said Eiryn Griest Schwartzman, CHES, Executive Director of COVID Safe Campus. “Mask bans disproportionately harm the most marginalized people, especially racially marginalized and disabled people.”
“The recent resurgence and application of mask bans has largely occurred in reaction to people peaceably exercising their constitutionally protected right to engage in anonymous speech and protest in public spaces, particularly in an era of increasing technological surveillance,” said Lee Rowland, Executive Director, National Coalition Against Censorship. “Mask ban legislation has the effect – if not the explicit intent – of intimidating and shaming people for exercising that right. Turning the American tradition of anonymous speech into probable cause for a crime flies in the face of our democratic free expression values.”
“Mask bans are part of a larger government effort to erase all signs of the ongoing pandemic, to drive a wedge between people and their constitutional right to privacy, and to manufacture a more compliant public willing to sacrifice their health in the name of profits,” said Emily Dupree, JD, PhD, Founder of Clean Air Club. “We will resist these reactionary proposals from every angle and continue to prioritize the health and privacy of a public that has been abandoned in the midst of multiple, ongoing crises.”
“Masking is community care,” said Jamie Sanin at Celebrate845. “If we say we care about our communities, we need to uphold their rights to mask up.”
“Banning masks will never keep New Yorkers safe,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Legal Director David Siffert. “According to the CDC, almost 50,000 Americans died of COVID in 2024, meanwhile air quality across the United States has regularly reached dangerous levels due to wildfires and other pollutants. Masks are among the most effective and accessible ways to stay safe, and they should be encouraged rather than banned.”
“Mask bans promise to multiply the privacy violations of our face-scanning, data-scraping world and further shrink our rights to express ourselves freely and safely in person and online,” said Sarah Philips, Campaigner at Fight for the Future. “These bans are a thinly-veiled flex of our oppressive surveillance and policing culture that, without opposition, will only grow more dangerous to us all.”
“Mask bans gin up ‘probable cause’ for police to seize and search any masked person in a crowd, without evidence of any further criminal intent,” said Alex Marthews, National Chair, Restore The Fourth.“They’re a recipe for police harassment of people in poor health, or for anyone who doesn’t want their identity doxed to employers, friends or family, for peacefully exercising their right to protest.”
Media Contact: 212-607-3360 | media@nyclu.org
