Ninth Circuit Delivers Major Victory for Women Who Speak Up in Brown v. Alaska Airlines
The Ninth Circuit has ruled in favor of two flight attendants who were fired for statements about the Equality Act, in the case Brown v. Alaska Airlines, Inc. This decision is an important victory for employees who speak up about sex-based safety and privacy. WoLF filed an amicus brief in support of the flight attendants.
Amicus briefs are an opportunity for groups or individuals who are not part of a case to weigh in with their arguments or provide additional context. Although the plaintiffs’ legal claims largely center on religious discrimination, WoLF’s brief adds an important feminist context to this case.
Case Background
In early 2021, Alaska Airlines said it would support the proposed Equality Act on an online internal employee network. The airline asked employees to comment. Lacey Smith asked, “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” And Marli Brown wrote:
“The Equality [A]ct would affect everything from girls’ and women’s showers and locker rooms to women’s shelters and women’s prisons, endangering safety and diminishing privacy. Giving people blanket permission to enter private spaces for the opposite sex enables sexual predators to exploit the rules and gain easy access to victims.”
Following their comments on the online forum, Smith and Brown were investigated and fired from their jobs. Alaska Airlines stated that the comments from Smith and Brown were “discriminatory,” “hateful,” and “offensive.”
At one point, union representative Terry Taylor, who later was supposed to defend Marli Brown to the company, wrote, “Can we PLEASE get someone to shut down comments, or put Marli and Lacey in a burlap bag and drop them in a well.”
WoLF’s Arguments
Our amicus brief provided necessary context to understanding why Brown’s statement mattered. Importantly, WoLF argued that:
Brown’s concerns about single-sex spaces under the Equality Act were factually grounded
Women raising concerns about privacy, safety, shelters, locker rooms, and prisons should not be treated as engaging in harassment.
Preserving female-only intimate spaces is a legitimate sex-based concern, not hostility to lesbian, gay, or bisexual people.
Decision
In a published opinion issued on June 24, 2026, the court reversed summary judgment for Alaska Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants and sent former flight attendants Marli Brown and Lacey Smith’s claims back for further proceedings. The panel held that Brown and Smith raised a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Alaska terminated them because of their religious beliefs and whether the union attempted to cause or acquiesced in that unlawful firing. The court also held that the Railway Labor Act does not preempt their state anti-discrimination claims against the union, preserving an important avenue of relief for workers facing discrimination by both employers and labor organizations.
The opinion is especially significant because it recognizes that Brown’s post was facially religious and that Alaska and the union understood it that way. Brown warned that the Equality Act would affect women’s showers, locker rooms, shelters, and prisons and would threaten women’s safety and privacy, and the company relied on that statement in terminating her employment. The Ninth Circuit made clear that a jury may decide whether Alaska improperly used anti-harassment policy as a cover for punishing religious belief and protected expression.
This decision restores the plaintiffs’ claims, rejects efforts to shield the union from accountability, and affirms that women and religious employees cannot be summarily silenced for expressing concern about the real-world effects of policies that erase sex-based boundaries.
WoLF continues to fight for women’s sex-based rights in court, but we can only do that because of the support of our donors and volunteers.