Face Mask Mandate and the "Right-To-Privacy"The mask requirement does not affect any privacy right whatsoever.
OK, I get it: Wearing a face mask is a good idea, about anywhere today. In my mind, about anywhere I am close enough to speak to another person. I am convinced of this, buy into the idea and practice it. I am considered at-risk in several categories, age being the most obvious.
However when wearing a face mask is made a legal mandate it raises some questions.
The Supreme Court has identified the right to privacy as grounds for forbidding any legal prohibition against abortion. They have found that a woman has the right to control her body. The slogan commonly heard is "My body, my choice". Given this established legal decision and the widely accepted cultural or social acceptance of it, why is it permissible to legally require anyone to wear a mask? After all, it is my body, why is it not my choice?
There is another issue at stake as well. If it is legal to require mask wearing . . .with legal ramifications for those who refuse, will it become legal to force everyone to get vaccinated? I myself have a pro-vaccine attitude, but many do not. In years past, there has been a vocal and determined opposition to any vaccination of children. If it is determined that forced mask wearing is permissible, will there be forced vaccinations? Perhaps forced is too strong a word. Coerced might be a better word.
Doing something such as mask wearing or vaccinating because it is the right thing to do is consistent with our historic societal values of independent thought and action. Doing something because it is forced upon us by legal mandate backed by coercion is not. Originally Posted by ICU 812
You are required to wear the mask in public when you are interacting with others. This means your privacy rights do NOT apply.
There has never been a right to keep your face hidden. Quite the opposite. If you walk into a business, especially a bank wearing a mask, you can be ejected is not arrested.
Privacy rights protect your personal information from disclosure. The appearance of your face, however, is not actually personal information. You can't order people to not look at you as you walk down the street because you want to protect your privacy.
If you want to reframe the argument in terms of personal autonomy rather than privacy, you still lose. There have always been limits on personal autonomy. It ends as soon as you harm someone else. So you can harp about your right to swing your fist in the air, but that right ends where the next guy's nose begins.
Try walking down the middle of the street in traffic rather than on the sidewalk and see how far you get. Try parking your car wherever you want or walking onto any piece of property you want and see what happens.
You can't drive a car as fast as you want or even without a seatbelt.
So, no, your privacy rights aren't affected by wearing a mask anymore than they are by wearing a seatbelt. And your right to personal autonomy won't enable you to disregard the safety of others and spread disease.
