U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney blocked Philadelphia on Thursday from enforcing its mask law against federal officers, putting the city’s new rules on hold before they were set to take effect on Tuesday. The preliminary injunction stops the city from using the ordinance to police how federal officers work in the field.
The decision matters now because the law was about to begin regulating visible badges, masks and unmarked vehicles at a moment when the city had already approved the ban earlier this year. Judge Kenney said Philadelphia City Council could not decide how federal officers conduct operations, and he relied on the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause in reaching that conclusion.
The Justice Department sued last month, saying the measure was a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to regulate federal agents. The law would have restricted law enforcement officers’ use of masks, concealed identification and unmarked vehicles, while requiring visible badges and marked vehicles in certain situations. It also carried civil and criminal penalties for officers covered by the ordinance.
The dispute grew out of a broader city response to a national debate over masked immigration agents carrying out raids targeting migrants across the country. The Philadelphia measure was approved as part of a larger legislative package, and that package moved after reports that some of those agents were documented shooting people, including two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
But the injunction did not reach every officer the ordinance described. The measure was written to apply to local, state and federal law enforcement officers, yet Kenney’s order specifically blocks enforcement only against federal officers. That leaves Philadelphia with a law on the books that cannot be used against the group at the center of the federal lawsuit, even as the broader wording of the ordinance remains in place.
Kenney wrote that when Philadelphia City Council passed Bill No. 260060, it attempted to sidestep the Constitution’s clear mandate and ignored a principle of law that has guided American jurisprudence for more than 200 years. He also warned that adopting Philadelphia’s position would let municipalities decide whether to pass their own rules governing how, when, where and whether federal law enforcement officers can conceal their identities. The next question is not whether the city can enforce the ordinance against federal officers before Tuesday; under Thursday’s ruling, it cannot.
