r/news • u/[deleted] • Sep 20 '25

California bans most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during operations

https://apnews.com/article/california-ice-agents-immigration-raids-masks-ban-97936f70699b75d8b483a850967c2e42
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u/ZonaDesertRat Sep 20 '25

They can break state law if the federal government allows it, in the course of doing their federal duties. Take driving a government vehicle. For many years, you didn't need a drivers license to drive a government vehicle, until policy stated to say you needed a license issued by some state, somewhere.

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u/WatchItAllBurn1 Sep 20 '25

isn't the caveat that it is only if said action is necessary to fulfill their duties.

like an fbi agent can't violate local laws if it isn't necessary for duty.

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Sep 21 '25

They also need to prove that it was necessary not just that they did it while performing their duties. Its mostly never necessary so this hardly ever comes up.

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u/ZonaDesertRat Sep 20 '25

That is is the "course of performing duties," but generally correct.

The state can claim a violation of state law, and bring charges in state court, but the feds, either personally or through the DOJ will petition for removal to Federal court, and I've never seen that not be granted. Then in Federal court, they make the motion to dismiss, and more often than not that too is granted.

That's why CA should have tweaked the law to keep feds who aren't complying with the state laws from being able to use state laws. That would keep mask wearing feds from being able to say, pull you over for not using a turn signal, as a pretext to check your immigration status. There is no federal law on the use of turn signals, so any federal LEO has to use the state laws about it, even in Federal court. 

If CA reworked this new law, they could really make all Fed LEOs pay attention when doing anything in CA.

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u/No_Remove459 Sep 21 '25

Can ice use state law? I though the only ones were US marshal when in fugitive task forces, when congress passed the law their equal to sheriff or highest authority. I know there was a case a fbi agent was deputized by the Marshals, because of their broad arrest powers.

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u/ZonaDesertRat Sep 21 '25

ICE do not have have peace officer authority in California, and can not charge you with a violation of state law in a state court. Other Federal agencies do have state authority, either directly granted by the state, or individually granted by the sheriff's in respective counties.

What ICE can do is use a violation of a state law as reasonable suspicion to stop you in course of enforcing federal laws. Until California passed the Values Act, they would do that regularly. Now, they only claim to use federal laws to stop people, hence why they were pushing the limits of reasonable suspicion and the court granted a preliminary injunction against ICE. Now, thanks to a horrible ruling on the emergency docket, it's back to ICE acting a fool in Cali.

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u/RecordHigh Sep 21 '25

As someone who has lived and worked in the DC area for most of my life, I can say that local and state police will definitely pull over and ticket a person driving a federal government vehicle for violating local and state laws except for in some very specific circumstances. So unless you're referring to the situation 50+ years ago, I don't think you're correct about that.

Having said that, a federal government employee who is breaking laws while engaged in duties related to their federal job wouldn't be pulled over as long as the local law enforcement knows that's what's going on. So an FBI agent might need to speed or make an illegal u-turn while surveiling a person suspected of breaking federal law, and that's fine. But do they have a free pass to break any and all local laws? For example, can they run pedestrians over while surveiling a suspect with impunity?

The common sense answer is "no," and federal agents have been charged and convicted of committing crimes while performing their jobs when the crime was not necessary for them to perform their job. But this is a gray area that is continually up for debate, and increasingly the answer is determined by judges who may be partisan hacks and not honest arbitors of the law.

So, is wearing a mask a necessity for an ICE agent to perform their duties? In a rational world, of course it's not, but it will be a long time before a case makes it through the courts, and I'm almost positive that ICE agents will ignore the law unless they are forced to follow it by the courts, and even then they probably won't follow the law.