The enforcement of statewide mask wearing mandates to prevent COVID-19 in the US: an overview

Introduction

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control first recommended the wearing of face masks on April 3, 2020. On April 8, The Governor of New Jersey was the first to issue a general, statewide mandate, which required “workers and customers to wear cloth face coverings while on the premises”. By August 1, 33 state governors had issued state-wide mask wearing orders. The resulting pattern of regulations regarding mask wearing across the states is a welter. There is wide variation in the design of the ordinances, including whose behavior is being targeted, what is expected of them, when they must observe the ordinances, where their behavior is to be regulated, why they must submit to these orders, and how violations will be enforced. In this paper we summarize the introduction of state policies in those states which issued statewide mandates, and how these mandates are being enforced.

Methods

Our subjects were the 33 states which had mask mandates in effect by August 1.

We used newspaper and broadcasting articles as our primary sources. We identified these articles using Google searches ending August 4 with the following keywords: ”COVID-19”, “State” (e.g., “Pennsylvania”) AND “mask order” or “mask mandate” AND “enforcement” OR “education”. We used newspaper or broadcast articles as the primary source because they contained essential information about the mandates, as well as additional information about enforcement. We identify primary sources for each state in the Underlying data, Appendix 1¹. Most news sources came from local broadcast stations, local and national news services, networks including the Public Broadcasting System, CBS, and ABC. We used the actual ordinances as secondary sources, but these often did not contain information about enforcement.

We abstracted the following items for each state:

Are businesses given first-line responsibility for their customers and employees? By reading news articles, we determined if businesses were directly responsible for mask wearing behaviors of customers and employees on their premises. Answers were “Yes,” “No,” or in a few cases, “Unsure.”

What authorities enforce whether businesses apply mask wearing orders on their premises? We determined from the news articles which government agencies were responsible for ensuring that businesses were applying the governors’ orders. This information might also be obtained from the governors’ orders. For each state, we listed these authorities: “LLE” indicates “Local Law enforcement,” “LPH” signifies “Local Public Health,” and “DOH” signifies “Department of Health.”

What authorities enforce mask wearing behaviors outside of business premises? We identified the enforcement authorities from the news articles. Abbreviations are the same as the previous question.

Is education viewed as a primary tool to encourage mask wearing behaviors? We obtained this information from news articles. Answers were “Yes” or “No”.

Do local governments (counties and municipalities) pass their own orders? We obtained this information by searching news articles which identified additional county or municipal mask orders within individual states. Answers were “Yes” or “No”.

Has local law enforcement shown any resistance to enforcing statewide orders? We obtained this information by searching for news articles that identified local law enforcers’ comments on “enforcement.” Answers were “Yes” or “No”.

Results

The publications on which the analysis was based are shown in the Underlying data, Appendix 1¹. These data underlying the analysis are shown in the Data Availability section.

Which states issued statewide mandates?

We identify the 33 states with statewide mandates (green) in Figure 1. We did not cover states with county or municipal orders (yellow), states with only municipal orders (brown) or states with no orders (red).

Figure 1. In effect dates of statewide orders by US state.

The first state order (New Jersey) came in effect on April 8, 2020. We followed trends until 1 August, 2020. State acronyms are as follows. Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), Arkansas (AR), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Connecticut (CT), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HI), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), West Virginia (WV), Wisconsin (WI), Wyoming (WY).

Discussion/conclusions

Based on public and journalist reports, we analyzed the introduction and enforcement of statewide mask wearing mandates in the 33 US states that imposed such orders between April 10 and August 1, 2020. Most states relied on businesses to enforce customer and employee mask wearing behavior. However, both the contents of the governors’ orders and the type and degree of enforcement varied widely between the states. Enforcement responsibility for personal (outdoor) mask wearing behavior was handed over to local law enforcement.

The business sector of the economy has been very active in COVID-19 prevention during this time period by introducing mask wearing regulations for its customers and employees. A survey of large US retail chains showed that 16 chains had introduced cross-country mask wearing policies in May, 2 in June, and 34 in July. Despite the adoption of storewide prevention policies, businesses, their trade associations, and employee trade unions have expressed concern at taking on primary enforcement roles. Private companies still relied on state laws to provide them with a rationale for requiring customers to wear masks. These businesses are subject to degrees of enforcement that have been inconsistent across states and that have often been lax. Many governors’ orders also covered outdoor areas, and most of these were nominally enforced by local law enforcement agencies. However, senior law enforcement officers in all states issued statements that they would not enforce mask wearing orders. For example, 38 sheriffs in Montana issued an op-ed which stated that a mask wearing directive “is not a mandate for law enforcement to issue citations and arrest violators.” Although such statements were not universal, examples can be found in every state.

We used both governors’ orders and news reports for our data sources. Policies like engaging in public education are subjectively described and data for them are not collected; instead we used sheriffs’ interviews with journalists to document the policies. Also, we could not obtain data on citations written by local law enforcement. Nevertheless, information on education and enforcement was widely reported in the press across the nation, and strongly suggests a national trend. It also indicates that mask wearing behavior, now considered a bulwark against the spread of COVID-19, is not being strongly enforced, especially in the outdoor sectors.

Data availability

Harvard Dataverse: Press articles on statewide mask orders in 33 US states. https://doi.org/10.7939/DVN/SFIT0R¹

This project contains the following underlying data: