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Remember the "don't say gay" bill? If you were being very charitable, you could say that the so-called "don't say gay" bill in Florida did prohibit "saying gay" in certain contexts, so I suppose the reporting on it comported with Scott's ideas on bounded distrust, that the media rarely concts outright lies.
But the reporting on North Carolina's HB 237 looks to consist of outright lies. Background: the state already has a law on the books that prohibits concealing your identity when committing a crime, with a consequence that the class of misdemeanor or felony commited gets bumped up by one. During the pandemic they added an extemption to the law for thsoe wearing a mask for health reasons. HB 237 removes that exemption.
News media are reporting that North Carolina is banning mask wearing in public. Some examples of those spreading the idea that this is a general ban on public masking:
WaPo adds some more context, and describes the law as a prohibition on masking during a crime, but still lies in their headline by saying that the bill bans mask wearing at protests generally:
I don't know. I think if some activity X is generally banned, but with an exception for Y, then you remove the exception for Y, your action is fairly characterized as "banning Y." You used to be able to do Y. Now you can't. Sounds like a ban to me!
The problem with this formulation is that Y isn't banned unless done as part of X. In this case, what's illegal is not the wearing of a mask, it's wearing a mask to conceal one's identity. People may do Y, but they can't do Y in furtherance of X. To concretize other possible examples:
There is a law against loitering in front of the mall, unless you're wearing a funny hat. The exemption for funny hats is set to be removed. Are funny hats banned?
You may not drink alcoholic beverages at the park, with the exception of beer. The beer exception is removed. Is beer banned?
Carrying a firearm to intimidate others is illegal, but firearms in holsters are exempted. The exemption is removed. Are firearms or holsters banned?
I'm not sure I agree. I don't read any intent requirement in the text of 14-12.7. It seems like what's banned is "being in public wearing anything that could conceal your identity." Your intent about concealing your identity doesn't enter into it.
As to your examples I think it would be fair to say "they're banning standing around in front of the mall in a funny hat" or "they're banning beer in the park" but the firearm one is trickier.
I'm not sure how to bridge our different reading of the statute, but I don't agree with that summary at all. The text there [emphasis mine]:
This seems really clear to me that intent aside, the effect needs to be concealing the identity of the wearer. For example, the proverbial immunocompromised patient going to a hospital - we know they're not concealing their identity because their actions require the people they're interacting with to know who they are! It's true that determining whether someone's "face is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer" requires some degree of interpretation on the part of police and prosecutors, but I think that's just an unavoidable part of criminal law. The change here isn't actually a change to the need for contextual interpretation, it's just removing health as a fully general exception.
If someone wanted to take the principled stance that you should just be allowed to conceal your identity, I think they could probably make a pretty reasonable case for that, but it would be a pretty different argument than what we see the legislators and newspapers running with.
I would agree that in my example that funny hats at the mall are now banned. What I wouldn't say is that funny hats were generally banned. You can wear your funny hat to a lot of places! You just can't do it at the mall anymore. In the mask case, people that have some actual medical reason and aren't concealing their identity shouldn't really bump into much of a problem. The one area of overlap that I could see this actually being a thing is someone that insists it's medical getting into a conflict with a business-owner that just hates masks and wants them to take their stupid mask off. In the hat analogy, I would think it was weird if someone was super pissed about the funny hat change when what they really don't like is the loitering rule at the mall.
I think a place is different than a purpose because it's a lot harder to disagree about a place. I mean, what is a mall? What if you're sitting in a tram wearing a funny hat and a cop says that the tram is actually a mall so you have to pay a fee? And what if a judge agrees? This scenario is not worrying because in this world sanity has clearly broken down. But replace the mall with "intent to conceal" and it starts looking a lot more plausible.
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