In a viral video posted on YouTube and Instagram, a Costco employee instructs an unmasked man to leave the store.
“I’m asking this member to put on a mask because that’s company policy,” the employee says, as he takes the customer's cart away and orders him to leave. “And I’m not doing it because I woke up in a free country,” the customer responds.
The customer in that viral YouTube video may have woken up in a free country, but as corporate attorney Dan Barr with the law firm Perkins-Coie explains, the law allows businesses to require customers to wear masks for public health reasons — just like it requires them to wear shirts or shoes.
“They have the same rights that they have to require people to wear shirts, or shoes, or for that matter, clothes," Barr said. "They can certainly make the choice to require people to wear masks for the safety of their customers and their employees. And if people don’t want to wear masks or they disagree with that, they can go shop someplace else.”
Barr says there's no part of the Constitution that prohibits governments or businesses from enacting laws that reasonably protect public safety. Those that say otherwise clearly don't know what they're talking about, he says.
"Ask them what part of the Constitution they’re talking about, because there is no constitutional right," Barr said. "People who make that argument might as well make the argument 'I have the constitutional right to walk around naked' or 'I have the constitutional right to drive as fast as I want to drive.'"
There’s one exception: businesses must accommodate someone with a valid medical reason to not wear a mask — but accommodation could simply mean curbside service or online ordering.
"They could just bring the groceries outside to the person, like they do with a lot of people right now," Barr said. "Not somebody who just says 'I have a disability, believe me no matter what,' but a true disability. Then the issue is, can the business make a reasonable accommodation."
