Update on the Hope Anchorage women's DV shelter case.

[TheInebriati]

The court has ruled that they can offer single sex sleeping accommodation.

Federal Court Rules Battered Women’s Shelter Can’t Be Forced to Admit Transgender Woman
pluralist.com/transgender-woman-shelter-alaska/

Catch up links here;

''Coyle, 52, appears to have lived in Anchorage, Colorado and Idaho. He has a long list of prior arrests and convictions that include charges for armed robbery with a deadly weapon (dismissed by prosecution), and other theft charges, including shoplifting, resisting arrest, and violation of probation.''
mustreadalaska.com/transgender-files-complaint-shelter-abused-women/

Should women’s shelter be forced to accept biological men?
mustreadalaska.com/prop-1-should-womens-shelter-forced-accept-biological-men/

Anchorage attorney faces discrimination complaint while defending faith-based homeless shelter
www.ktuu.com/content/news/Anchorage-attorney-faces-discrimination-complaint-while-defending-faith-based-homeless-shelter--487725491.html

No woman — particularly not an abuse survivor — should be forced to sleep or disrobe next to a man.

Exactly. It's that simple.

Hallelujah.

It should not require a court case to establish this simple, reality based fact though.

My sympathies with the women and shelter who have had to go through all that stress and hassle just to ban men from women's spaces.

Thank goodness common sense prevailed

Really pleased to read this.

Great news! I’m so pleased the shelter fought this nonsense

Great news, but don't expect this to be the end of it, they will be taken to court again and again.
No boundaries allowed.

Great news. That would have been a huge legal loophole any abusive man could abuse. Which they would.

Very good news

The full judgment is here:

www.documentcloud.org/documents/6267474-Order-on-PI-Downtown-Hope-Center-v-AERC.html

This is great news but they're not out of the woods yet. This is a preliminary injunction and it's only in place until Hope Center's case against AERC is heard.

Hope Center filed its Complaint in this Court on August 16, 2018, claiming violation of its First Amendment rights of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of expressive association; violation of the Establishment Clause; violation of the Fourteenth Amendment rights of procedural due process and equal protection; and violation of its Alaska constitutional rights of freedom of religion, equal protection, and privacy.

Thereafter, in October 2018, AERC administratively closed the Second Complaint. The First Complaint remains unresolved.

The first, unresolved complaint here is Coyle's for not being admitted to the shelter.

The second, dropped complaint was brought by AERC:

On May 15, 2018, AERC filed a separate discrimination complaint against Hope Center and its attorney (“Second Complaint”), claiming that the attorney had made statements published in various media that stated or implied that transgender individuals would not be allowed to be sheltered at Hope Center, in violation of AMC § 5.20.020 and/or § 5.20.050.46

If I understand correctly, the original complaint by Coyle against the shelter has not been dropped, it has been postponed until after the shelter's case against AERC. In the meantime, the shelter can continue to only allow actual women and to publish their admissions policy.

What is very hopeful is that in granting the injunction, the court has decided that the shelter are likely to succeed on the merits of their case.

I do wonder whether the recent adverse international publicity re. the Yaniv case has started to make Canadian human right tribunal members sit up and take notice, and perhaps look at the implications/consequences of any judgments in a different light than they did before.

This case is in Alaska (USA) not Canada

Whew.

Unfortunately in the USA this case is being positioned as a religious liberty case so it’s easy for leftists here to dismiss as “right wing bigotry”.

Of course every woman deserves privacy and the right to associate on the basis of sex when there’s cause - not only religious women

Interesting difference between this legal code and the UK equality act and the way the single-sex exceptions work -

UK EA - you first decide whether discriminating on the grounds of sex is lawful (proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim). If it is, only then do you decide whether it is also lawful to discriminate on the grounds of 'gender reassignment'*

Anchorage Municipal Code (I've only read the snippets and arguments in this judgment, I'm sure it's more complicated than this) - it looks like you decide whether it's lawful to discriminate on the grounds of 'sex or gender identity' at the same time.

I wonder if we're missing a trick here - I know we're all understandably hypervigilant about the conflation of sex and gender, especially where the law is concerned, but what struck me reading this judgment is the argument that 'TWAW' was not used. Everything hinged on whether it was legal for the shelter to discriminate on the grounds of 'sex or gender identity' - or not. Either/or.

And of course it's legal, homeless shelters are listed as a specific exception under the most relevant bit of the code. So they can do both, they can say 'we admit anybody born female including those who say they are men; we don't admit anybody born male even those who say they are women.'

By contrast, the UK EA is structured in such a way that you first have to justify why something is single sex and then face an additional fight about what that means.

An example of getting this badly wrong is Kairos Women's Space's recent advert for a project worker, to work with women who 'may have experienced struggles with mental wellbeing, addictions, involvement in the criminal justice system and domestic/sexual abuse.' -

Please note that this post is open to women only under the Equality Act 2010, Schedule 9, Part 1 (inclusive of non-binary people, trans and intersex women.)

goodmoves.com/vacancy/a4s0N000000H3CPQA0/kairos-womens-space-project-worker

So they went to the trouble of invoking the single-sex exception but then rendered it completely meaningless. How is it possible for this to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim regarding sex, but not regarding gender reassignment? Doesn't the inclusion of some male people negate the claim that making this job women only is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim in the first place? What is the aim? How is this a proportionate means?

As soon as something is announced as 'women only' or 'for women', certain male people who enjoy trampling on women's boundaries will flock like moths to a flame and the two stage process in the UK EA gives them an 'in' to argue that of course a service etc. should be single-sex but TWAW so they should be included.

The Anchorage Municipal Code conflates 'sex or gender identity' into a single category which looks scary as fuck but it appears to mean that if it is lawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex then it is also lawful to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity.

I think this case is worth watching, as well as any other cases where the law puts 'sex or gender identity' into a single category.
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*UK Equality Act says - A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

Fascinating post Pencils [faint but pursuing]

Those are both really helpful posts, PencilsInSpace.
Its been an interesting case, I can't think of any other legal case where the defending lawyer has been in hot water for doing their job.