Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal for a new ban on face coverings raises irresolvable constitutional and enforcement concerns.

When she took office during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Kathy Hochul kept in place mandates that New Yorkers wear masks to help stop the spread of the virus. Last summer, meanwhile, the governor made one million masks available to protect residents from wildfire smoke.

Now, the Democrat is proposing a new ban on masks.

The whiplash-inducing change is necessary, Ms. Hochul claims, because criminals are hiding their identities as they commit their malfeasance, particularly on the New York subway system. Her proposal essentially would reinstate some form of a pre-Civil War statute that banned wearing masks in public places.

That law was repealed during the pandemic, of course. And rightly so.

There are all sorts of reasons why New Yorkers might want to wear masks — and they should be free to do so. Some might want some protection against viral illnesses, including COVID-19. Others might want to protect their faces on one of those bitterly cold days on which a ski mask comes in handy. Some might cover their faces for religious reasons.

Some might even wish to protest anonymously.

That last reason seems intertwined with Ms. Hochul’s push, given the objections raised about masked protesters demonstrating against the ongoing war in Gaza. In just one recent example, a group of masked protesters chanted outside a Manhattan exhibit that memorializes those killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack.

Whether a person finds those protests distasteful or cowardly is beside the point. The right to speak anonymously is a free speech right guaranteed by the First Amendment and backed by significant U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including one that in 1958 said the NAACP in Alabama could not be forced to reveal its membership lists.

And what, really, is the difference between speech delivered by a masked protester in public and someone commenting anonymously on Facebook or X? If Ms. Hochul’s push for new legislation is successful, the state can count on court challenges and will likely lose.

Granted, we have yet to see legislative language from Ms. Hochul, who says she plans to work with the Legislature to fine-tune a proposal that would target violent mask wearers while protecting peaceful protesters and religious attire. But we suspect no amount of tuning could hide the proposal’s inherent contradictions.

Even if the law is crafted to allow the wearing of religious face coverings and the N-95s offered last summer to protect New Yorkers from smoke, wouldn’t criminals simply choose to wear similar coverings? How will police judge who is legitimately wearing a mask and who isn’t? The impulse would be to target those who look suspicious, whatever that means, raising concerns about selective and prejudicial enforcement.

Even if the law is limited to masks worn in the subway, all the same concerns apply, as they would to a Republican version of the proposal that would criminalize loitering and congregating while wearing a mask.

In truth, New York’s former ban on face coverings, enacted in 1845, was bad legislation that should have been repealed long before COVID-19 emergencies. Ms. Hochul should abandon her plan to bring it back.

— Albany Times Union