In response to states lifting mask mandates, the National Retail Federation stressed that businesses have the right to establish and enforce their own policies. The governors of Texas and Mississippi are ending mask mandates in those states. Health officials have implored Americans to wear a mask during the pandemic for months now, citing studies that indicate mask wearing can significantly reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. The former CDC director even told lawmakers last September that he “might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.” Governors in Texas and Mississippi have lifted state executive orders mandating face coverings amid the pandemic, but a slew of businesses have already said they will still require customers to wear masks.

• If a customer doesn’t wear a mask but still enters the business after seeing the signage, “by most people’s definition I think that would probably show intent — you read a sign and you don’t obey the sign,” he said.
• Trying to enforce a more lenient “face covering” rule under NSx3 precedent is also fraught.
• As for the woman’s claim that the mask rules are “just made up by Bill Gates and them,” Gates is a private citizen who happens to be one of the most generous billionaire philanthropists in the world.
• And forcing someone, especially someone who has survived Covid or had a “vaccine,” to wear a mask 8 hours a day is a form of harassment, even if all employees are instructed to wear masks.
• Major retailers like Costco, Walmart and Target recently announced fully vaccinated customers do not have to wear masks unless it’s still required by a local health order.
• What the Galveston bank branch did was especially grievous because it denied a depositor timely access to her funds.

This article originally appeared inCovering COVID-19, a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists. Just to be clear, a business can refuse to serve you if the business is requiring you to wear one. “It also can be potentially unfair for your baseline workers, your stock people, your salespeople, the folks that have more direct minute-by-minute contact with the public,” he noted. You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way.

Verify: With Mask Regulations Loosening, Can Businesses Still Require You To Wear A Mask?

Most importantly, any private entity that enforces a medical-grade mask mandate may be practicing medicine without a license, a serious offense in all 50 U.S. states. Seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, rules about who can sell cigarettes and where people can smoke them. Even the so-called Big Gulp ban in New York City — these public health rules are often seen as paternalistic.

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Private businesses can require you to wear a shirt, to pay only with cash, or ban returns. Robert E. Wright is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the brewery temecula ca author or editor of over two dozen major books, book series, and edited collections, including AIER’sThe Best of Thomas Paine andFinancial Exclusion. He has also authored numerous articles for important journals, including theAmerican Economic Review,Business History Review,Independent Review,Journal of Private Enterprise,Review of Finance, andSouthern Economic Review. Robert has taught business, economics, and policy courses at Augustana University, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Temple University, the University of Virginia, and elsewhere since taking his Ph.D. in History from SUNY Buffalo in 1997.

“I think that there is some threshold of the level of community transmission of COVID-19 and the proportion of population that’s vaccinated at which point you would say that it’s no longer necessary. But I doubt there’s any place in the United States that would meet those criteria right now,” Jackson said. WTHR would like to send you push notifications about the latest news and weather. As an incarcerated writer, I too often encounter publications demanding sensational content with shock value about events inside the prison walls.

Employers cannot be left to decide what constitutes harassment or public health and safety. So we’re actually seeing some business owners and managers, as well, urge local governments or state governments to adopt mandatory mask requirements as a way of taking the pressure off of them. I think a lot of business owners would like to be able to point to the government and say, “If you don’t like our rules, take it up with the mayor,” instead of being positioned as requiring the masks themselves.

More: Texas Governor On Ending Mask Order: ‘we No Longer Need Government Running Our Lives’

Last week, the CDC did release new guidelines stating fully-vaccinated people can be mask-less almost everywhere because their risk of getting or spreading the virus is very low. As for the woman’s claim that the mask rules are “just made up by Bill Gates and them,” Gates is a private citizen who happens to be one of the most generous billionaire philanthropists in the world. But he does not have the power to impose mask rules on citizens in any state or city. NSx3 rules falter legally at the retail level when inconsistently applied, as they often are. Visit any store on the Jersey Shore in high season and you’re bound to see topless young men and young ladies wearing nothing more than a thong and a waterproof brassiere happily shopping away. But then I saunter in with just a European-style speedo and carnage ensues because I am creating a negative externality while the younger folks are creating positive ones .

CVS and Target Corp. are among those saying masks are still required for customers and employees nationwide. Target said it doesn’t plan to drop those kinds of requirements even as vaccination distributions increase. Wearing a mask is meant to reduce the spread of the virus, especially from asymptomatic people, not specifically to protect the wearer from the virus. In other words, it’s to protect others from whatever the person wearing the mask might have. Charges can also escalate for those who may take further action if they are denied service for wearing a mask, Garrett said, an issue many businesses across the nation have already grappled with as employees ask defiant customers to don masks.

These frontline workers also have to deal with the danger of the virus itself, which is killing guards at some of the highest rates of any job. Its Office for National Statistics found that male security guards have had 100.7 deaths per 100,000 workers recorded from March to December of 2020, a rate more than three times the national average for all jobs. WFMY would like to send you push notifications about the latest news and weather. Note the woman said “carbon monoxide,” which is a gas produced by burning gasoline or other fuel and is not created by the body. “In most states, criminal trespass is either a misdemeanor or even an infraction. An infraction means that you get fined at the very most. Misdemeanors could potentially carry up to six months in prison,” Garrett explained.