Allowing religious and nonprofit organizations to discriminate in their employment practices is among a series of changes being sought by the state’s human rights commission, which got a bill introduced and immediately heard by a committee afterward on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Alaska State Commission for Human Rights<\/a> is also seeking to change its name to Alaska State Commission for Civil Rights, which the agency’s leader says would keep it from dealing with complaints about matters such as criminal due process, privacy, freedom of speech, education and health. Furthermore, the bill would give the governor the right to remove board members “for cause.”<\/p>\n The commission attracted national attention last month<\/a> when an investigative report revealed equal protection language for LGBTQ+ individuals was quietly removed on the the advice of Attorney General Treg Taylor, after it was requested by a Christian group critical of Gov. Mike Dunleavy during his reelection campaign for not being conservative enough.<\/p>\n House Bill 181<\/a> was introduced a day after legislation restoring those protections was referred to the judiciary committee, following a contentious hearing<\/a> and vote by the Community and Regional Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n An initial hearing on HB 181 early Wednesday afternoon by the House Judiciary Committee, which was scheduled days before the bill was introduced about an hour before the meeting, wasn’t as confrontational. But Robert Corbisier, the commission’s executive director, faced a series of questions from Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat who is gay, about who religious and nonprofits could fire if, for instance, the employee was of a different faith or refused to participate in a daily prayer.<\/p>\n “I worked as professional soloist at churches and synagogues,” Gray said. “No one asked me what my religion was, so I did all of them. But if any of them had said ‘you’re not Jewish, Baptist (or) Episcopalian…would be a case because I was singing in the service that they would have the right to tell me that I could no longer do that job?”<\/p>\n Corbisier said recent federal court decisions<\/a> largely exempt such organizations from discrimination claims, so they could indeed fire Gray.<\/p>\n “I think they’ve got a strong argument singing is a part of the ecclesiastical, spiritual or religious aspect of that job,” Corbisier said.<\/p>\n The same provision would apply to firing a school janitor who refused to participate in a morning prayer or refusing to hire a person with a speech impediment, he said, responding to other hypothetical situations.<\/p>\n “They could refuse to hire the employee for any reason,” he said.<\/p>\n