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Are Protesters Who Wear Masks Acting Illegally?
(Wall Street Journal) Philip Hamburger - After the Civil War, members of the Ku Klux Klan relied on masks to protect them from identification by witnesses when they threatened, assaulted and murdered recently emancipated slaves. Congress responded by enacting laws against masking, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. One of its provisions is now Section 1985 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code. It provides for damages when two or more persons "conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws." Like Klansmen, masked students shield themselves from accountability for disruption and violence. When a university takes a permissive approach to masking, it facilitates the masked wrongdoers, and it deprives their targets - in this case, mostly Jewish students and faculty - of the equal protection of the laws. Universities need to take civil-rights laws seriously. Schools that permit obstructive, bullying, and sometimes violent antisemites to hide their identities are depriving Jews of equal protection in violation of the law. The writer teaches at Columbia Law School and is CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.