Alaska Airlines Invited Employee Debate. Two Flight Attendants Were Fired After They Responded.

Alaska Airlines told employees that its internal communications network, Alaska’s World, was a place to “openly and constructively share ideas, ask respectful questions, and understand one another and our company.” On February 25, 2021, the airline used that forum to announce its support for the Equality Act and left the post open for employee comments.

Smith asked one question: “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” Brown later posted a much longer objection saying the legislation would endanger the church, suppress religious freedom and eliminate conscience protections. Her comment also claimed that rules governing access to sex-separated spaces could be exploited by sexual predators.

By that night, Alaska had removed both comments, closed the discussion and opened investigations. On March 19, the airline fired both women.

The employees’ situations overlapped, but they weren’t identical. Brown explicitly framed her objection around religion and had no prior discipline. Smith’s comment contained no express religious reference, and she was still within an 18-month disciplinary period arising from an earlier petition opposing Alaska’s public support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Before inviting comments, Alaska understood that its Equality Act position raised religious-freedom concerns for some employees. Tiffany Dehaan, the airline’s managing director for culture, learning and inclusion, testified that management knew “religious concerns” were continuing to arise.

The company’s rules required civil and respectful discussion. Its usual response to a policy-violating comment was removal, with employees blocked from commenting after three deletions. A separate zero-tolerance policy barred harassment and discrimination, and Alaska retained authority to skip progressive discipline for some violations.

Brown’s supervisor considered her religious concern sincere and recommended a “record of discussion” without discipline. Alaska instead fired her despite an otherwise clean record and declined to offer a last-chance agreement. Smith presented a different disciplinary question because Alaska had warned her that further misconduct during her 18-month probationary period could lead to termination.

After the comments were removed, the airline changed the forum rules. It eliminated the three-strikes system and added language barring partisan or personal opinions, including religious and political views. Before that revision, retiring chief executive Brad Tilden had warned company leaders against censoring employees for holding conservative Christian views.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA AFL-CIO represented Brown and Smith. Its officials were therefore responsible for defending the employees during Alaska’s disciplinary process. The record also shows senior union figures communicating with management about the comments before and during that process.

Jeffrey Peterson, president of the union’s Alaska governing council, coordinated with the airline over its public response to Smith. He flagged Brown’s post to Alaska executives and wrote that he wished fewer people struggled to unify “their faith with inclusivity.” Peterson acknowledged that this degree of involvement in disciplinary matters was unusual for him.

Other private messages were more explicit. Peterson wrote that management should send Smith’s “bigoted ass packing” and texted “I hate her” to an Alaska pilot. Union representative Terry Taylor said Brown “needs to go!” and wrote in a group chat that someone should put the two employees “in a burlap bag and drop them in a well,” a message Taylor later revised. During Brown’s interview, Taylor privately texted, “I may hurl.”

Those messages don’t establish that the union discriminated. Peterson also told colleagues that the union would represent Smith fairly, in good faith and without discrimination. The union filed grievances for both women, and Brown later expressed approval of its performance at her grievance hearing.

Brown offered a different account. She said union representatives discouraged her from raising religious discrimination and failed to present that defense adequately. The appellate majority held that the private messages, Peterson’s unusual involvement and the disputed representation created a jury question about whether the union attempted to cause the firings or knowingly acquiesced in religious discrimination.

Alaska’s defense is that it enforced workplace rules, not a religious test. Brown’s termination notice said her post demeaned LGBTQ employees and equated LGBTQ people with sexual predators. Smith’s notice said that defining sexual orientation or gender identity as a moral issue was discriminatory and undermined the company’s effort to maintain an inclusive workplace.

The record also contains employee complaints. Judge Morgan Christen, dissenting from the ruling on Smith’s claim against Alaska, emphasized that multiple flight attendants reportedly questioned whether they could safely work with Smith. She also stressed the teamwork required of flight attendants during emergencies and Smith’s existing disciplinary warning.

The majority did not dispute that an employer may punish workplace discrimination or harassment, even when the conduct is religiously motivated. Its conclusion was narrower: a reasonable jury could find that Alaska’s descriptions of these particular comments were exaggerated or inaccurate and that the policies were used as a pretext for religious discrimination.

The district court had granted summary judgment to Alaska and the union. Summary judgment ends a claim without a trial when the evidence leaves no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the outcome. The Ninth Circuit held that the evidence here required further proceedings.

That ruling does not mean Brown and Smith proved discrimination. It means the majority concluded that a reasonable jury could disbelieve the neutral explanations offered for the challenged decisions.

The narrower labor-law ruling

The court also rejected the union’s argument that the Railway Labor Act displaced the employees’ state discrimination claims. Federal labor law requires an exclusive union to represent members fairly. The panel held that this federal duty does not erase the separate protections supplied by Washington and Oregon anti-discrimination laws.

The ruling was limited. It did not define every state-law duty that may be imposed on an airline union. It held only that these Title VII-style state discrimination protections were not categorically preempted.

The central factual questions remain open. A later factfinder must determine whether Alaska honestly believed the posts violated its workplace rules, whether religion influenced either firing, and whether union officials caused or accepted discriminatory treatment while representing the employees.

Smith’s claim against Alaska is the most sharply divided issue. The majority inferred possible religious context from Alaska’s awareness of religious objections, its joint handling of the two cases and the union president’s references to faith. Judge Christen concluded that Alaska couldn’t have fired Smith because of a religious belief it had not been told was behind her one-line question. Smith’s prior discipline, in the dissent’s view, supplied an independently sufficient explanation.

The source opinion does not report a trial result, settlement, damages award or admission of liability. It sends the dispute back to the district court with the competing explanations intact.