The Anchorage Daily News, in partnership with ProPublica, conducted an investigation into the quietly removed legal protections for LGBTQ+, one year after the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights explicitly stated it was illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The two publishers found the decision had been requested by a conservative Christian group and was announced on the Alaska attorney general’s Twitter feed, which had all of 31 followers at the time of publication.
The chair of the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights, Zackary Gottshall, is obviously not the guy to champion LGBTQ+ rights under any circumstances. According to ProPublica, “he once filed an equal opportunity employment complaint claiming he had been passed over for a job in the U.S. Army because he is a man” and “in the past year posted tweets questioning the validity of transgender identity.”
On August 16, the state’s human rights commission announced on Twitter and Facebook that “Our position that LGBTQ+ discrimination applied to places of public accommodation, housing, credit/financing, and government practices is void.” The commission will now only accept employment discrimination cases. ProPublica found that the commission deleted from its website a link to a document called, “ASCHR LGBTQ Discrimination Guide.” It also deleted a statement that it is illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity of expression in Alaska. The site now states it is illegal to discriminate only “in some instances.”
