New campaign tracks spread of campus mask bans at 60+ universities threatened by Trump admin, highlighting growing threats to student health, privacy, and free expression

As students return to colleges and universities across the country, Fight for the Future and COVID Safe Campus are launching our Campus Mask Policy Scorecard.

This policy tracker closely follows the more than 60 schools facing attacks from the Trump administration, many of them sites of large-scale anti-genocide protests since 2023. A favored tool of administrators taking a hard line against campus protesters, mask bans have quickly become a battleground policy in the fight for student privacy and free expression. Mask restrictions additionally threaten accessibility and public health, forcing students to choose between their health and safety and their ability to participate fully in campus life.

This update comes as more than 30 rights organizations (led by Fight for the Future) are calling on top universities to fight Trump’s attacks on student protests by rolling back campus surveillance policies. Together, these efforts seek to challenge the anticipated escalation of these dangerous policies, particularly at schools facing explicit federal pressure to ban masks or lose funding (see the April 2025 letter from Trump admin agencies demanding Harvard University “implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension”).

As universities update their guidelines for the 2025-2026 school year, campus communities and members of the press are invited to make use of the scorecard in reporting on and pushing back against these draconian measures. The tracker will continue to be updated as universities respond to requests for comment and make policy changes. Submit new policies, enforcement incidents, and calls to action at StopCampusMaskBans.com. Find student perspectives on the bans below.

Campus mask bans began to spread in earnest during the last academic year, closely mirroring a years long wave of state and local mask ban legislation aiming to suppress pro-Palestine protests and bolster surveillance. Among their proponents are groups like the conservative Manhattan Institute, who liken campus protesters to the KKK, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who backed a proposed New York mask ban and rewarded Georgetown University with higher ratings for further restricting masking. These groups claim that giving police a blank check to arrest protesters wearing face coverings will improve “safety”—but in practice, the bans are used to single out and arrest protesters in efforts to shut down protected speech.

Restrictions and enforcement incidents notably escalated this past spring and summer. In March, Columbia University capitulated to Trump admin demands and adopted a mask ban among other anti- protest measures, prompting some students to self-censor out of fear of repression. That same month, a new University of California policy began requiring attendees of public comment sessions to wear transparent, ill-fitting masks or none at all. In May, police detained seven students leaving a public comment session at the UC San Francisco medical campus for wearing masks. Some students—notably students of color—were targeted despite complying with the mask policy. In July, Georgetown University officially codified mask removal and ID check policies following an April incident in which protesters were told to remove their masks or face arrest.

Dozens of rights groups across issues have voiced their opposition to the bans, citing a broad range of harms. Given the continued importance of masking to protect against COVID, Long COVID, and other illnesses, public health groups warn that discouraging masking will only increase the spread of disease, making everyone less safe. Disability rights advocates further warn of increased harassment, police violence, and inaccessibility of public space, particularly for Disabled people of color. Mask bans further promote the idea that wearing a mask or face covering is inherently suspicious. That’s one of the reasons why health or religious exemptions aren’t enough: enforcement in the hands of campus authorities and police will always be subjective. Taken altogether, these harms make it clear that mask bans, not masks, are the safety issue.

“Campus mask bans are the litmus test for administrators who claim they’re resisting Trump’s attacks on higher education—and too many are failing miserably,” said Alex Mantis (they/she) of Fight for the Future. “Schools are now saying, ‘not only will we allow protesters to be brutalized, doxxed, and endlessly surveilled, we’ll punish them for protecting their health and privacy.’ That’s much more aligned with Trump’s fascist agenda than they’d like to admit. On campuses where students already have to deal with illegal facial recognition tech and stalking by undercover investigators, mask restrictions force them to further comply with unnecessary invasions of privacy and a culture of control. If they really want to keep students safe, universities should stop doing Trump’s bidding, stop surveilling students, and reverse campus mask restrictions.”

“Mask bans are an act of intentional harm that we must do everything in our power to reject,” said Eiryn Griest Schwartzman (they/them), public health scientist and Executive Director of COVID Safe Campus. “University leaders know that masks are an essential public health tool and disability aid, and when institutions act as though the pandemic they once recognized is ‘over’ and shift to these regressive policies, they forcefully subject campus community members to a multitude of harms. Universities that once required and encouraged masks to mitigate the deadly and disabling effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are now knowingly stripping campus community members of the right to protect themselves from ever-present health threats ranging from infectious diseases to air pollution, as well as exposing them to the dangerous impacts of criminalization and police repression.”

“Academic institutions claim to stand up for science,” they added, “but in reality they’re abandoning it and doubling down on their complicity in genocide to appease a government administration seeking to destroy higher education, all while unjustly treating their own students as threats. It’s never a coincidence when suddenly, universities adopt similar regressive policies one by one. Our policy tracking has shown us that when influential institutions give in to unjust demands and restrict masking, their peers follow suit. But this isn’t inevitable. Administrators have the choice to reject pressure to ban masks on their campuses, and anything less is selling out their students and every value universities claim to hold dear.”

Student Perspectives:

“Georgetown University’s new mask policy is only the latest in their attempts to threaten and punish students for demanding that the university cut ties with the genocidal occupier,” said Georgetown University student Natalie G. (she/her). “Last semester alone, I watched campus police, at the behest of the administration, drag students off campus for protesting, stop visibly Brown and Muslim students for ID checks, and heavily surveil community events. Now, GUPD and university administrators have the unrestricted power to stop anyone masking, whether that be because they are immunocompromised, sick, or concerned about their privacy. Without a doubt, this policy targets disabled students, Brown and Black students, visibly Muslim students, and any student exercising their right to protest. Ableist and racist masks bans will never stop me nor my classmates from continuing to protest our university’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
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“Barnard’s mask restrictions have posed a serious access issue for me and other disabled and immunocompromised students,” a Barnard College student told Fight for the
Future. “We’ve been forced to remove our respirators upon entering campus despite disclosing our health status. Oftentimes, the line to get onto campus is long and crowded due to the ID checks and forced unmasking, putting us at further risk of illness and restricting our freedom of movement at our own school. I can’t help but think of the parallel to IOF checkpoints in Palestine.”

“We’re also worried about the increased threat of doxxing,” the student noted. “After Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage’s refusal to meet with masked students in response to a February sit-in, Mahmoud Khalil showed up to a March sit-in unmasked, leading him to face online harassment and doxxing. Three days later, he was kidnapped by ICE. Ultimately, our struggle against surveillance and censorship on campus is intimately connected to the Palestinian struggle, and campus mask restrictions threaten everyone, able bodied, disabled, organizers, and non-organizers alike.”
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Members of the UCLA Disabled Student Union said, “UC Regents weaponize mask bans as a way to suppress free speech and protest, while also trampling disability rights and the right for students to wear their own health and disability aids, such as masks.”

One member added: “Mask bans reaffirm to me that the university system does not care about its students, let alone disabled students, and make me feel unsafe and unwelcome on campus.”