Alaska Says It's Now Legal "in Some Instances" to Discriminate Against LGBTQ Individuals
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But a year later, the commission quietly reversed that position. It deleted language from the state website promising equal protections for transgender and gay Alaskans against most categories of discrimination, and it began refusing to investigate complaints. Only employment-related complaints would now be accepted, and investigators dropped any non-employment LGBTQ civil rights cases they had been working on.
The Alaska State Commission for Human Rights website previously stated, “In Alaska it is illegal to discriminate … because of … sexual orientation / gender identity or ‘expression.’” As of Aug. 18, 2022, the site removed the language saying it was illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people. A reference that was added lower on the page now says it is illegal to discriminate for those reasons “in some instances”. (Highlights added by ProPublica for emphasis)
An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found the decision had been requested by a conservative Christian group and was made the week of the Republican primary for governor, in which Gov. Mike Dunleavy was criticized for not being conservative enough. The commission made the change on the advice of Attorney General Treg Taylor and announced it publicly via its Twitter feed — which currently has 31 followers — on Election Day.
The LGBTQ advocacy nonprofit Identity Alaska called the reversal “state-sponsored discrimination.”
The group noted that discrimination against LGBTQ people can occur in a variety of domains, including housing, financing and other decisions by the state. “The real-world consequences of these policies are harms to LGBTQIA+ Alaskans,” Identity Alaska’s board said in a written statement to the Daily News and ProPublica.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/alaska-says-it-s-now-legal-in-some-instances-to-discriminate-against-lgbtq-individuals/ar-AA18dE6R
