Court upholds Alaska shelter’s gender-based admission policy

An Alaska federal court has protected a faith-based women’s shelter from having to give beds to men alongside women who have suffered physical and sexual abuse.
In a Christmas week ruling, US District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that Downtown Hope Center was not a âpublic housingâ place subject to an Anchorage nondiscrimination order. The rule threatened the refuge with fines and penalties for following its religious beliefs by serving only women – not men who identify as women – in need.
In the June 2021 trial, attorneys for the Hope Center asked the court to prevent the city from enforcing the recently revised order, which they said was used against the shelter, as a preventive measure. In May, city council removed an exemption for homeless shelters.
The city argued that the law did not apply to the shelter and would not be enforced against it. The judge agreed. âHope Center’s accommodation services are not ‘available to the public’ in the way typical of public housing,â Gleason wrote. â’Individual members of the general public’ cannot avail of Hope Center’s services, as shelter guests must meet a long list of criteria to be eligible for admission, a list that would exclude the vast majority of the general public. public. “
Hope Center did not obtain a court order blocking the enforcement of the order, but its lawyers said the ruling still justified the shelter. The city had previously attempted to enforce an earlier version of the law against the shelter. After Hope Center refused to admit a drunken man who identified himself as a woman, it filed a complaint with the Alaska Equal Rights Commission. The city of Anchorage continued with the complaint, dropping it only after Hope Center attorneys filed a complaint in 2018.
âVulnerable women deserve a safe place to spend the night, and we are happy that they can sleep soundly, at least for now, due to the court order,â said Kate Anderson of Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the refuge.
This is not the only threat that faith shelters face. These groups remain concerned about the Biden administration’s withdrawal in April 2021 of a proposed rule that would have allowed shelters receiving federal funds to separate residents by biological sex. Biden reverted to an Obama-era rule that requires federally-funded shelters to provide access based on a person’s gender identity. This means that men who identify as women could use the women’s accommodation, toilets and showers.