Can Rock Hill businesses make you wear a mask now that the city doesn’t require it?
Rock Hill officials are no longer, for the time being, enforcing the city’s mask requirement, but the city’s businesses still can.
Monday night, the Rock Hill City Council voted 4-3 to lift “the enforcement and the effect” of the citywide mask ordinance, first passed in July, city attorney Paul Dillingham said. The ordinance required people to wear face coverings in food and retail establishments, such as grocery stores and pharmacies.
The council will hold a formal discussion at its next meeting to hear comments from the public before any official changes are made to the mask ordinance itself. Until enforcement was suspended, a violation of the rule could have resulted in a civil infraction.
Rock Hill’s decision came after South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order that loosened coronavirus restrictions, no longer requiring people to wear masks or face coverings inside state-owned buildings or restaurants when not eating or drinking.
Although McMaster never enforced a statewide mask requirement, South Carolina joined other states, including Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota, that have eased mask requirements in recent months.
Under McMaster’s new order, Rock Hill’s mandate could no longer be enforced, Dillingham said. As of Friday, McMaster’s order will “supersede and preempt any such local ordinance, rule, regulation, or other restriction,” according to the official language.
Even so, Dillingham confirmed, in an email to The Herald Wednesday, that despite council’s decision to lift enforcement of its mask rule, businesses within the city still can require that masks are worn.
“I want to quickly say that the governor urges restaurants to keep the requirement in place,” Dillingham said at Monday night’s meeting. “It’s just that the cities no longer are in that business.”
And many — but not all — supermarkets and other large retail chains, including Target, Publix, Walgreens, CVS and Walmart, already require customers to wear face masks at all locations.
Target, which has a location in Rock Hill, requires customers — except young children and those with underlying medical conditions — to wear a mask at all stores, according to its website. The retail chain will provide masks to customers without one. Even those who have been vaccinated must wear one at Target locations, a rule that falls “in line with current CDC guidance,” according to its website.
Walgreens requires all customers to wear masks in stores, citing that the policy is “consistent with CDC guidelines,” according to the pharmacy’s website. Walgreens employees “may gently remind” customers without a mask about the rule, but they’ll not stop customers from shopping.
CVS has a similar policy, however, the pharmacy chain does not expect its employees to enforce it — only that customers comply, according to a July press release.
In order to enforce its mask requirement, Walmart created the role of “health ambassadors,” who are stationed at store entrances to ensure customers wear masks, according to the retail chain’s website.
Publix, which has multiple Rock Hill locations, requires customers wear masks, and will provide a mask to customers without one, according to its website. The grocery store chain enforces its mask requirement on a “case-by-case basis,” according to its website.
City’s vaccine clinic is ‘a better tool for fighting this virus’
Rock Hill Mayor John Gettys, who voted to lift enforcement of the mandate, said when the city first put the mask requirement in place, there were few mechanisms available to stop the spread of coronavirus. That’s no longer the case with the city’s vaccination clinic, he said.
He said so far, the vaccination clinic has administered more than 17,000 first and second doses of the vaccine and by the end of this week, there will be thousands more residents who’ve gotten the vaccine.
“The mask ordinance and all that was a reactive measure to the virus,” he told The Herald in a phone call before Monday night’s meeting. “But the vaccines are proactive. It’s important for us, as a community, to recognize that that really is where our focus needs to be and that is to get as many vaccines in people’s arms as we can as quickly as we can.”
The same day Rock Hill’s council suspended enforcement, South Carolina opened up vaccine eligibility to 2.7 million South Carolinians.
More than 43,062 York County residents had been vaccinated as of Wednesday, according to the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, meaning that the number of doses administered at Rock Hill’s clinic account for nearly 41% of the county’s total doses given.
Gettys said the number of residents who’ve been vaccinated, in combination with residents who’ve had a previous COVID-19 infection, account for almost a third of the city’s population with some form of protection against the virus.
“We didn’t have any tools to help us, as a community, related to the coronavirus,” he said. “Since two months ago, now, we opened up this vaccination clinic, we have a better tool for fighting this virus.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 8:04 AM.
