Senate GOP will negotiate on masks but doesn’t want watered down bill, Berger says

Senate leader Phil Berger said Thursday that he expects Senate and House Republicans will try to work out an agreement on mask legislation that stalled this week, but reiterated that his caucus doesn’t want to water down the bill they’ve passed.

The Senate passed a substitute to existing legislation last week that would increase penalties for people who wear masks to commit crimes. It would impose penalties for those who participate in demonstrations that block traffic or emergency vehicles.

The bill also contained a controversial provision that would repeal an exception to the state’s longstanding ban on masking in public, which allows people to wear masks for health and safety reasons.

Senate Republicans argued that the health exception, put in place during the pandemic, is no longer needed. And that even though the bill would make masking for health reasons illegal, that wasn’t penalized before the pandemic, so it shouldn’t cause concern going forward either.

The bill stalled in the House this week, however, after House members from both parties decided in a voice vote not to concur with the Senate bill.

House Speaker Tim Moore said there was broad support among Republicans for the bill’s provisions that seek to crack down on people who block traffic or wear masks to conceal their identity while committing crimes. But he said he believed language could be drafted to make clear that people who wear masks in public to protect their health wouldn’t face any criminal penalties for doing so.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning after session, Berger said the issue for Senate Republicans is whether the health and safety exception currently in place “swallows the rule, and basically is something that continues to allow people to wear a mask and violate the law.”

GOP lawmakers will “see if we can work something out” that is agreeable to both Senate and House Republicans, he said. But Senate Republicans feel strongly “that we do not need to have a situation where folks can use the excuse of, ‘it’s a health reason’ to then hide their identity and go out and commit unlawful acts,” Berger said.

The House’s vote Wednesday not to concur with the Senate-passed bill triggered the creation of a conference committee that will include a few members from both chambers who will try to agree on a final version of the bill that the House and Senate can later vote on, and send to Gov. Roy Cooper.

The conferees appointed by the House include GOP Reps. John Torbett, Erin Paré, Sarah Stevens and Brian Biggs.

Paré and Torbett both spoke publicly in recent days in favor of guaranteeing that people who wear masks for legitimate health reasons will be able to continue doing so without any problems.

“Any person has every right in the world, and every freedom, to protect themselves with a mask in public if they feel they should,” Paré told The News & Observer this week.

She also said she felt that the bill as written was “creating a lot of confusion,” and said she had heard from many concerned constituents.

The Senate hasn’t appointed its conferees yet. Berger told reporters on Thursday that he plans to talk to members of his caucus who have been most involved with the mask bill first, before deciding “as to how we go from there.”