Two former Alaska Airlines flight attendants who say they were fired for raising religious objections to the Equality Act can move forward with their lawsuit against both the airline and their union, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday in Brown v. Alaska Airlines.
The decision revives claims brought by Lacey Smith and Marli Brown, who allege that Alaska Airlines discriminated against them because of their religious beliefs and that the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA failed to fairly represent them. A lower court had previously sided with the airline and union, granting summary judgment and dismissing the case. The Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, finding that both women had raised issues that should be decided by a jury.
The dispute began in February 2021, when Alaska Airlines posted a message on its internal employee forum, Alaska’s World, announcing its support for the Equality Act. The company had encouraged employees to use the forum to share ideas, ask respectful questions, and discuss company issues.
Smith, a Christian flight attendant, responded by asking, “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” Brown, also a Christian flight attendant, later posted a longer criticism of the bill, arguing that it threatened religious liberty, women’s rights, parental rights, and conscience protections.
Alaska received complaints about the posts. Company officials initially considered responding publicly, but internal messages showed sharper disagreement behind the scenes. According to the court, one Alaska legal department employee wrote that employees “do not have the right to believe that LGBTQ rights are ‘immoral,’” a statement with which an Alaska vice president agreed.
The airline eventually shut down comments on the post, deleted Smith’s and Brown’s comments, and later changed its internal comment policy to prohibit partisan or personal opinions, including religious and political opinions.
Union officials were also involved in the controversy. The court described several internal messages from union representatives criticizing the women and their views. Jeffrey Peterson, president of the Master Executive Council for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, called Smith’s post “reprehensible” and said there should be consequences. In another message, he wrote, “I hate her,” referring to Smith.
Other union officials made similar remarks. Terry Taylor, who later served as Brown’s union representative during her grievance process, privately criticized Brown during an investigatory meeting. The court noted that Brown’s own supervisor believed her concerns were sincere and recommended no formal discipline. Alaska nonetheless fired Brown on March 19, 2021, concluding that her post violated the company’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
Smith was also terminated that same day. In her notice of discharge, Alaska said that framing gender identity or sexual orientation as a moral issue was “not a philosophical question, but a discriminatory statement.”
The Ninth Circuit said the central issue is not whether Alaska may discipline employees for harassment or discrimination. It can. The question, the court explained, is whether the airline truly fired Brown and Smith for violating workplace policies, or whether those policies were used as a pretext to punish them for religious beliefs.
Judge Daniel Bress, joined by Judge Kenneth Lee, wrote the court’s opinion. Judge Morgan Christen agreed with most of the ruling but would not have allowed Smith’s claim against Alaska Airlines to proceed.
The court emphasized that Alaska had created a forum for employees to discuss a controversial issue and had invited workers to engage with differences. A reasonable jury, the panel said, could find that the company’s stated reasons for firing the women were overstated or pretextual.
The case will now return to trial, where Smith and Brown will have the chance to argue that Alaska Airlines and the flight attendants’ union discriminated against them for expressing religiously motivated objections to the Equality Act.