Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed a law on Thursday that prohibits law enforcement officers in the state from covering their faces to hide their identity — a response to concerns about identification during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Effective immediately, all law enforcement officers, including federal immigration officers, will be required to show their faces while performing their official duties in the state.
“Of course, law enforcement’s job is to protect us. Yet ICE is hiding from public accountability,” said Ferguson, a Democrat. “Washingtonians should know they are interacting with legitimate law enforcement officers.”
The bill passed unanimously by Democrats, who have a majority in the state legislature, and with 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 by a federal judge last month. The judge ruled that California’s “No Secrets Police Act” violated the Constitution by targeting federal police, not state and local police alike.
Previous Washington state law only required law enforcement to be “reasonably identifiable” while performing their official duties, which included a name on their badge or uniform. There were no specifics about face coverings, which the new law was intended to clarify.
While Washington state’s new law mirrors California’s law, there is one key difference: It applies to all federal, state and local law enforcement — potentially increasing the chances of a case standing up in court.
After signing the bill, Ferguson told reporters that he knew legal challenges to the law would be “inevitable”, but remained optimistic.
“I’m confident and we’ve tried our best to structure it in a way that’s defensible,” he said.
The state saw Increase in ICE arrests Last year, according to data from the University of Washington. People in the state and elsewhere have been detained by federal immigration officials with their faces covered, raising security concerns among state officials about potential fraudsters.
The Trump administration insisted that face coverings were necessary to protect federal officers and protect them from being targeted by the public.
