A Virginia law prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks is likely unconstitutional, a U.S. judge ruled on June 30.
“The Mask/Identity Statute directly regulates the conduct of federal law enforcement in the enforcement of the federal immigration laws,” in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, U.S. District Judge Robert Payne said in a three-page decision.
The clause says federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land” and has been interpreted by courts to prevent states from legislating areas that would impede the federal government.
The law had been set to take effect on July 1.
Payne also said that the federal government would likely suffer irreparable injury if the law were allowed to be enforced, because the government’s “valid laws and practices in a domain of federal authority are undermined by impermissible state regulation that is required by the Mast/Identity Statute and because there is evidence that enforcement of the Mask/Identity Statute would expose federal employees to real risk of physical harm in, and in connection with, the discharge of their duties when enforcing federal immigration law and policy.”
He entered a preliminary injunction.
That means the law is blocked as the case moves forward.
The office of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who signed the law on May 30, did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
The law in question said state and federal law enforcement officers could not wear facial coverings that obscured, concealed, or otherwise covered their faces while performing official duties.
“Law enforcement officers wearing masks on American streets undercut basic expectations of accountability, sow fear and confusion, and erode the public trust,” Spanberger said about the law in a previous statement.
“Americans have witnessed the horrors of what can occur when masked federal immigration enforcement agents engage in fear-based policing and enforcement theatre on American streets.”
She pointed to how immigration officers in Minnesota fatally shot nurse Alex Pretti while he was protesting and a woman named Renee Good after she disobeyed orders not to move her vehicle.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued over Virginia’s law. Government lawyers said it improperly tried to regulate federal operations.
“The Act is blatantly unconstitutional because it violates the principles of intergovernmental immunity that flow from the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution by regulating what Federal officers may and may not wear within the Commonwealth of Virginia when ‘engaged in the performance of their official duties,’ including face coverings and personal identifiers,” they said in a filing.
