What Trump Meant by ‘Illegal Protests’

1. What Trump Meant by ‘Illegal Protests’

What Trump Meant by ‘Illegal Protests’ WSJ Mar 10, 2025 12:04 PM IST Read this news in brief form Share Via Copy Link ‘NO MASKS!’ is a reference to the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

Demonstrators protest outside the main gates of Columbia University in New York, March 4.When President Trump tweeted on March 4 that “all federal funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” he puzzled many academics. Most protests are lawful and constitutionally protected. Even more bewildering, he emphasized “NO MASKS!” Since then, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has begun cutting off some funds. Is this mere bullying, or is it a response to a real legal problem?

PREMIUM What Trump Meant by ‘Illegal Protests’

After the Civil War, members of the Ku Klux Klan relied on masks to protect their identities when they threatened, assaulted and murdered recently emancipated slaves. The masks liberated Klansmen from any inhibitions and protected them from identification by witnesses to their crimes.

Congress responded by enacting laws against masking, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. One of its provisions is now Section 1985 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code. It provides for damages when two or more persons “conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws.” This statute recognizes masking as an equal-protection problem.

The masking question is linked to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of race and, by extension, national origin in federally funded programs. Like Klansmen, masked students shield themselves from accountability for disruption and violence. A university, not knowing their identities, can’t take disciplinary actions against them, including disciplinary actions required by Title VI. Thus, when a university takes a permissive approach to masking, it facilitates the masked wrongdoers, and it deprives their targets—in this case, mostly Jewish students and faculty—of the equal protection of the laws, including Title VI.

Under the First Amendment, Title VI shouldn’t be understood to require the suppression of open debate. But civil-rights laws have long limited masking to preserve equal protection, and on that ground alone, the government has reason to think itself justified in cutting off its largess.

What about law-abiding students who claim a right to wear face coverings, either as a form of symbolic speech or for religious or medical reasons? Universities could accommodate them by requiring all persons on campus to be easily identifiable either by leaving their faces exposed or by displaying university ID on their chests. This approach would have to be supplemented with rules against lending IDs, requiring the prompt reporting of missing IDs, and so forth. It would have the virtue, however, of avoiding the need to carve out exemptions.

The larger point is that universities need to take civil-rights laws seriously. Schools that permit obstructive, bullying, and sometimes violent antisemites to hide their identities are depriving Jews of equal protection in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act and Title VI.

Mr. Hamburger teaches at Columbia Law School and is CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He is the author of “Education Is Speech.”