New Washington State Law Bans Law Enforcement From Covering Face

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Thursday signed a law prohibiting law enforcement officers in the state from covering their faces to hide their identities — a response to concerns about identification during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

All law enforcement officers, including federal immigration officers, must show their faces while performing their official duties in the state, effective immediately.

“Law enforcement’s job, of course, is to protect us. Yet ICE is hiding from public accountability,” said Ferguson, a Democrat. “Washingtonians must know they are interacting with legitimate law enforcement officers.”

The bill passed unanimously by Democrats, who hold a majority in the state’s Legislature, and received no votes from Republicans, who called the bill unconstitutional. The Supremacy Clause in the Constitution mandates that federal law take precedence over state law — an argument the Trump administration used to challenge a similar law in California, which was blocked last month by a federal judge. The judge said California’s “No Secret Police Act” violated the Constitution by targeting federal police and not state and local police equally.

Previous Washington state law only required law enforcement to be “reasonably identifiable” while performing their official duties, which included through a name on their badge or uniforms. It had no specifics around face coverings, which this new law aimed to clarify.

While Washington state’s new law mirrors the one in California, it holds a key distinction: It applies to all federal, state and local law enforcement — potentially bolstering its chance of holding up in court.

Ferguson told reporters after the bill signing that he knew legal challenges to the law would be “inevitable,” but remained optimistic.

“I’m confident, and we did our best to structure it in a way that is defensible,” he said.

The state saw a surge of ICE arrests last year, according to data from the University of Washington. People in the state and elsewhere have been detained by federal immigration officers whose faces were covered, leading to safety concerns from state officials over potential imposters.

The Trump administration insisted the face coverings were necessary for the safety of the federal officers and to protect them from being targeted by the public.