As Covid cases rise across California, the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass announced that city officials were exploring the legality of wearing masks at demonstrations.
The announcement came as a response to a pro-Palestinian protest outside a Los Angeles synagogue that made international headlines.
Bass, a Democrat, said at a press conference with local Jewish leaders on Monday that she would be seeking “several points of clarity” from the city attorney “around what are the parameters with protests: when permits are needed, whether or not people should be masked, and establishing clear lines of demarcation between what is legal and what is not”.
The move represents a stark reversal from 2020, when public health officials urged protesters to wear masks, and Democratic politicians embraced mask-wearing, while Donald Trump and many Republicans rejected masks and other public health measures.
Bass’s exploration of a mask ban comes as data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracks Covid levels in wastewater also found that California’s Covid levels are sharply higher than the rest of the country. Viral levels in California wastewater crossed a point of “high activity” in June, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In Los Angeles county, the average daily number of reported cases rose to 154 in the week ending 16 June, according to public health officials, though this number is an undercount of actual total cases. At least 406 people have died from Covid-19 in Los Angeles county so far this year.
Bass is not the first Democratic politician to embrace a mask ban in response to ongoing national protests over the US’s role in the war on Gaza. In mid-June, the Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul said she was considering a ban on masks on public transit, which she described as a response to the threat of masked protesters engaged in antisemitic behavior.
“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to evade responsibility for criminal or threatening behavior,” Hochul said, adding that “on a subway, people should not be able to hide behind a mask to commit crimes”.
Eric Adams, New York City’s Democratic mayor, said he was a “strong supporter of the decision of stopping masks on our subway system, of masks in protests and masks in other areas where it is not health related”, Newsweek reported. “I think that you’re going to see a great deal of very violent protests, and some of this despicable hate we’re seeing, I think you’re gonna see it dissipate.”
A pro-Palestinian protester who participated in the Los Angeles demonstration on Sunday said that they and their friends were wearing N95 masks, and that some pro-Israeli counter-protesters, who were unmasked, “were telling me that Covid is not happening or not real any more”.
Bass’s suggestion that masks might be banned at protests was “a very concerning thing, just in terms of accessibility for protests”, said the demonstrator, who asked not to have their name published because of safety concerns. “All of the folks that I organize with, we make it a point for everyone to wear masks to protect any vulnerable community members, so they also feel safe and comfortable coming out to these actions.”
