The Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging New York’s mask ban, which bars federal law enforcement officers from covering their faces.
The DOJ labels the restriction unconstitutional.
The Empire State’s law, set to take effect Friday, would subject U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other federal officials to criminal penalties.
Federal officers would face “harassment, tracking, intimidation, and assaults” under the law, according to the 40-page complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
“Threatening officers with prosecution for simply protecting their identities and their families also chills the enforcement of federal law and compromises sensitive law enforcement operations,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Taking pictures and videos of federal enforcement officers to publish online can let suspects identify agents who become involved in future undercover operations, thus obstructing the missions, the department said.
Two days after New York’s legislation passed, the Department of Homeland Security vowed to have it dismissed, and the Trump administration told the state it intended to sue over the bill and seek emergency relief before it takes effect, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
“Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “New York’s anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”
Federal regulation requires designated officers to identify themselves as authorized immigration agents and state the reason for the arrest “as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and ICE officers have discretion on when they wear face covers, remove individual identifiers and announce themselves.
“Removing this flexibility would undermine officer safety and operational effectiveness,” the DOJ’s attorneys wrote.
New York’s Face Covering and Identification acts “violate the principles of intergovernmental immunity and the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the department’s attorneys wrote.
“Despite that well-established precedent, New York recently passed bills, which Ms. Hochul signed into law, that purport to do exactly what constitutional law says it cannot: subject federal officers to criminal laws that seek to regulate how those officers carry out their federal duties,” the suit reads.
The New York law also bans cooperative agreements between ICE and state or local law enforcement agencies that deputize local officers to perform federal immigration enforcement duties, which the Justice Department argues conflicts with federal law.
Pending litigation between the U.S. government and multiple states seeks to determine whether terminating such agreements and prohibiting masks violates federal law.
The Justice Department filed a similar lawsuit against Philadelphia last week and achieved a partial victory in California, where a district court blocked the state’s mask ban on discrimination grounds — finding it applied to federal but not state officers — while keeping a companion identification requirement in place. The 9th Circuit subsequently blocked that identification requirement pending appeal but did not address the mask ban.
The DOJ is also awaiting outcomes in lawsuits against Virginia, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, and New York Attorney General Letitia James responded with a countersuit on Monday, asking the court to find that the Trump administration’s efforts interfere with “New York’s authority to protect public safety, promote transparency, and govern the use of state and local resources.”
Ms. Hochul said in a statement, “A badge carries with it a responsibility to uphold the public’s trust. New Yorkers deserve to know who is enforcing the law in their communities and have the assurance that local resources are being deployed to protect public safety, not to intimidate or advance the agenda of a rogue federal agency. These laws reflect New York’s values, and we’re not going to let anyone bully us into abandoning them.”
