Friday, July 11, 2025
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Keep D.C. politics out of fish and game management

By EDDIE GRASSER

Late in President Obama’s final term, the National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) circumvented Congress by effectively revoking the State of Alaska’s long-standing authority to manage game within national preserves and wildlife refuges.

In doing so, rural Alaskans, including those who practice millennia-old harvest strategies to feed their families, found their age-old traditions criminalized.

While the USFWS portions of this overreach were promptly overridden by the next Congress, the federal rule for national preserves required presidential intervention.

Earlier this week, President Trump did just that, by finalizing a new National Park Service rule which restores game management authority in preserves to the State of Alaska.

The midnight regulations from the previous administration represented just one of many assaults by federal bureaucrats seeking to erode Alaska’s self-governance.

In this case, federal authorities justified their overreach by claiming they were acting to protect Alaska’s ecosystem from the State’s attempts to manage big-game populations.

As we noted in our 2018 response, this is a work of fiction. The practice of “denning,” which Alaska Natives have used for thousands of years to feed their families during the harsh winter months, is unrelated to population control efforts.

After the Board of Game recognized this practice in 2008 for the express purpose of respecting long-standing cultural traditions, black bear harvests decreased to less than 10 animals per year in the Denali National Preserve. Similar results were observed in other bear populations. 

The State of Alaska has always sought to maintain sustainable predator population densities that match local ecosystems. As we carefully documented, any harvest increases as a result of traditional practices were not expected to have any impact on sustainable wolf, bear, or prey population densities.

In stark contrast, the federal government provided no scientific data or analysis to support their dubious claims. They even neglected to scientifically define the “natural” population densities they allegedly sought.

Worse, supporters of this overreach have waged a public opinion battle that is seemingly intended to vilify Alaska Natives’ heritage. Of the nearly 300,000 public comments received on both the original rule and the recent reversion, nearly a quarter million were form letters. Out-of-state groups like the National Resource Defense Council, whose president earns over $500,000 a year, fundraised off outrageous statements about donuts, orphaned cubs, and “gassed” wolf dens.

Members of Congress joined in by accusing Alaskans of supporting the “Puppy Killing Act,” and comparing traditional hunters to barbarians. One representative claimed Alaskans desperately want to shoot animals from helicopters, suggesting we should instead go play “video games.”

“I hear virtual reality headsets these days make it just like the real thing,” she joked as she spoke on the House floor.

If they were to set aside their vitriol, they would discover that traditional hunts like those conducted by the Koyukon Athabascan often involve traveling to 100 dens to locate a small number of harvestable bears. Dens with bear cubs are avoided whenever possible.

Other outrageous claims like the “gassing” of wolves or shooting animals from helicopters for sport are quickly dispelled by reading Alaska’s wildlife management regulations which expressly prohibit these activities.

Clearly these arguments are red herrings, meant to drum up support for a decades-long campaign to transfer state authority to Washington, D.C. The tragedy is that no state or federal authority is better equipped to sustainably manage natural resources than Alaska. 

Since statehood, we have consistently shown the world that resource management and conservation go hand in hand. In the early 1900s, unregulated fishing resulted in the routine over-harvesting of salmon throughout the Lower 48’s Pacific coastline.

Mere decades later, pollution and infrastructure projects, devoid of conservation considerations, compounded this tragedy. Perhaps the worst example is the mighty Columbia River which sees only three percent of the salmon it once supported.

Meanwhile, 207 million salmon were sustainably harvested in Alaskan waters last year. Despite challenging ocean conditions, that amount has increased by 70 million fish in the past 20 years. Likewise, our wildlife continues to flourish. The Fortymile Caribou Herd recently exceeded 80,000 animals – numbers not seen since the 1920s.

Alaska’s success is no coincidence. It’s a collaborative effort between our wildlife scientists, conservationists, hunters, and subsistence communities. In fact, many Alaskans would consider themselves members of multiple categories. Just last week, our department received a $100,000 check from hunters and conservationists working together to conserve Dall Sheep populations in Alaska.

The bottom line is that when Alaskans are free to manage our fish and game using the proven principles enshrined our state constitution, our wildlife flourishes and all Americans reap the benefits. Let’s respect the law and keep D.C. politics out of the Last Frontier.

Eddie Grasser is the director of Wildlife Conservation for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Midtown up in arms over homeless shelter proposal

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Homeowners from Rogers Park to Geneva Woods in midtown Anchorage are worrying about an ordinance in front of the Anchorage Assembly that would allow Mayor Ethan Berkowitz to purchase the Best Western Golden Lion Hotel and turn it into a homeless shelter.

AO 2020-58 was introduced this month, but with no mention about the plans afoot for the actual shelter location. Those plans to change zoning are now being discussed in the neighborhoods, where concerns are coming forward. The ordinance bypasses the Planning and Zoning Commission so that a large portion of midtown can be rezoned to include any number of homeless shelters.

Mayor Berkowitz earlier this year turned the Sullivan and Boeke Arenas in midtown into homeless shelters to help with the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Few homeless people have contracted the illness, but the arenas are still being used as shelters three months later.

Meanwhile, drug-and-alcohol encampments had overwhelmed the downtown area near 3rd and Ingra on and off for several years before being cleared out last month. Many of the inebriate homeless who lived along that ridge have moved to the Walmart area on A Street, where they’ve set up tents on the sidewalks and in the rights of way. They are the people who are difficult to house because they do not want to follow “house rules” of supervised shelters.

The Best Western Golden Lion Hotel on 36th Street an Anchorage classic, near the University of Alaska, University Mall, and the desirable neighborhoods of Rogers Park, College Village and Geneva Woods, where home values are strong and the neighborhoods are filled with property taxpayers.

Some of those residents are saying that the ordinance circumvents the most important part of the public process for approving rezoning by skipping the Planning and Zoning Commission, a usual requirement. The ordinance would allow the change to B3 districts to be permanent, allowing transient shelters in major portions of the city, including next to schools and day care centers.

36th and Seward is a one of the busiest intersections in Anchorage, with more than 75,000 cars driving through at average speeds of 45 mph or higher. The intersection is considered a hazard for pedestrians and is extremely congested during rush hour, often backed up for a mile, critics of the zoning change say.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

WEDNESDAY, June 17 at 11 am – Assembly Committee on Homelessness Meeting – Agenda: https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/Pages/Committee%20on%20Homelessness.aspx

Public Participation is limited to 10 minutes. The Muni’s website states: If you wish to provide comments at the beginning of the meeting, email Assembly Member Zaletel at [email protected] by 10 am Wednesday, June 17. The committee will only accommodate the first 3-4 people who sign up.

Call in: 907-519-0237 Conference ID Number: 616 527 933#

THURSDAY at 9:30 am – Assembly Community and Economic Development Meeting – Agenda: https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/Pages/Community%20and%20Economic%20Development%20Committee.aspx

Call in: (907) 519-0237, Conference ID Number: 635 736 473#

THURSDAY at 12:20 PM – 1:35 PM – Assembly Budget/Finance Committee-of-the-Whole Meeting– CARES Act funding, which may be used by Berkowitz to purchase the Golden Lion Inn, at top of Agenda: https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/Pages/BudgetandFinanceCommittee-of-the-Whole.aspx

Call in: (907) 519-0237, Conference ID Number: 796 072 329#

TUESDAY, June 23 Regular Assembly Meeting – Item NOT on the Agenda yet –  http://publicdocs.muni.org/sirepub/pubmtgframe.aspx?meetid=1582&doctype=agenda

JULY 14: Public Hearing, not yet calendared.

Deadly force: Guard takes down intruder at Navy SEAL compound in Kodiak

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Thirty-year-old Jayson Vinberg of Kodiak is dead after he brought a knife to a gunfight, so to speak, at a Navy SEAL training center on Kodiak Island.

Vinberg entered the Naval Special Warfare Detachment Kodiak compound on Saturday and tapped on the guardhouse window with a knife. He was advised by the duty officer to leave the premises, but when the duty officer left his post to make sure Vinberg was actually leaving, Vinberg came at him with the knife. 

Vinberg failed to obey repeated commends to stop walking toward the guard. The officer pulled out his firearm and shot Vinberg, who was soon declared dead by medics.

The investigation is being conducted as a joint investigation between Alaska Bureau of Investigation and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The duty officer’s name won’t be released until after consultation with the Alaska US Attorney’s Office and Naval Criminal Investigative Unit is complete.

The compound is a 55-acre site used for cold-weather training by U.S. Navy SEALS, an elite fighting force.

Vinberg was not a registered voter in Alaska, nor did he apply for a Permanent Fund dividend in 2019. He has ties to Utah, although he appears to have attended Kodiak High School and worked in tire shops in Utah in the past. No motive or explanation has been released for his behavior.

File photo: Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus observes training at Naval Special Warfare Center Detachment Kodiak. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam Shavers/Released)

Pebble Partnership announces profit-sharing for Bristol Bay residents

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Pebble Partnership announced Tuesday that the company has created the Pebble Performance Dividend (PPD) to distribute a percentage of the revenue generated from the operation of a mine at Pebble to year-round residents of Bristol Bay.

Qualifying residents will get a 3 percent share of company’s revenues. During the first few years of the capital investment recovery phase, a $3 million fund will be set up to be distributed annually to the residents who join the program.

If 3,000 residents register for the program, the PPD will distribute $1,000 dollars to qualified participants once construction begins, money that will come from the $3 million initial fund.

“When we rolled out our new, smaller mine plan in 2017, I made a commitment to find a way to share the opportunity Pebble represents with the residents of Bristol Bay,” said Tom Collier, Pebble Partnership CEO. “While not everyone will want to work at the mine, this ensures a direct way for everyone to participate. Whether a resident supports the project, opposes it, or is neutral, anyone who is a year-round resident can participate. However, year-round residents who want to share in this opportunity must register their interest.”

PLP created a web portal for Bristol Bay residents to register and learn more about the opportunity – www.pebbledividend.com .

Once fully operational and profitable, the PPD will distribute 3% of the net profits from the mine to registered Bristol Bay residents.

Residency, governance and distribution will be overseen by an advisory board comprised of well-known Alaskans John Shively and Willie Hensley along with residents from the region.

All Bristol Bay residents who register via the web portal before July 31 will be eligible for a drawing for an annual early Pebble Performance Dividend beginning this year and payable through the start of construction. Five early dividend winners will be chosen from the group of eligible participants registered by July 31 . The web portal will remain open for registration until August 31 .

“Developing a mine at Pebble will provide jobs, economic activity, local tax revenue and infrastructure. Today we are adding one more way residents of the region can directly benefit from Pebble via our revenue sharing plan,” said Collier.

Collier further noted that federal permitting is nearing conclusion with an Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expected this summer.

Fairbanks school committee pushes staff ‘decolonization, white supremacy’ training

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No one ever accused the Fairbanks School District of giving students a true classical liberal arts education. The proficiency scores from the PEAKS tests show students skimming along just above the pitiful state average.

But all those classics that you may consider literature, and all that Socratic pedagogy used to get kids to think could be thrown in the burn pile, if “decolonization” efforts by the district’s Diversity Committee are taken seriously.

[Read: The value of a classical liberal arts education]

The Fairbanks School District’s Diversity Committee met June 10, and while the topics covered the expected — inclusion and diversity — several members expressed a new sense of urgency for more training on what it means to be woke.

Schools across Alaska have been out of session for months due to COVID-19, and the way the diversity committee sees it, now is the time for more intensive training.

Members argued that training should be mandatory on topics such as inclusion, micro-aggression, white supremacy, decolonization, and gender expression.

Listen, as at-large committee member Alyssa Quintyn describes her vision of what that training should be and how it should include indoctrination on white supremacy and decolonization. (Audio only at the click:)

WHAT IS DECOLONIZATION TRAINING?

What does “decolonization” training actually mean? In academia, it means the banishing certain works of literature or art.

The “decolonize your bookshelf” movement is now removing American and Western classics from schools, when the authors of the literature were white men or women, and who may through today’s lens appear racist, sexist, xenophobic, or merely heterosexual.

“In essence, it is about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long,” explains Juan Dival, writing for NPR.

“If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat?” he wrote.

One could reasonably come to the conclusion that decolonization training for Fairbanks teachers would include having them evaluate their reading lists under the watchful eye of a Maoist cultural moderator.

Removing books from required reading lists is something that the MatSu Borough School Board tried recently when it sought to remove a handful books that described child rape and human degradation. The school board found itself under siege by a national and local group of liberals that were horrified that literature be removed from reading lists, even though the books were still on the shelves in the school library.

The entire committee meeting can be listened to at this link.

From spit on to spoiled burritos, Trump supporters wonder about restaurants

WHERE CAN REPUBLICANS AND FIRST RESPONDERS SAFELY EAT?

The first known Alaska incident of tampering with a Trump supporter’s food, when politics became poison for a customer, may have occurred in Fairbanks last month at the Fairbanks Espresso shack.

A young man wearing a MAGA hat and with a Trump sign on his truck ordered a coffee and breakfast burrito, only to find marking pen all over the burrito, telling him to never come back again.

He told Must Read Alaska that he surely won’t return, after he had red ink all over his burrito and was called a fascist by the Fairbanks Espresso owner.

In Juneau this month, a restaurant owner coined a new flavor of ice cream, “Fuck the Police,” or “BLUEberry Lives Murder,” as he alternately called it, with “Defund the Police blueberry jam. Some readers and those in law enforcement say they plan to stay away from The Rookery and the In Bocca Al Lupo restaurants after the incident.

Last week, soldiers from South Carolina’s National Guard, who were recently deployed to protect the nation’s capital and the White House from rioters, found shards of glass baked into a pizza they had ordered while stationed in D.C.

The pieces of glass were discovered both in the dough and the cheese after the delivery was made at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, where troops had been staying, according to The Post and Courier newspaper, which cited the Department of Defense.

This week, New York police officers were taken to the hospital after having their drinks poisoned by someone at a Shake Shack restaurant in New York City.

The trend of restaurant violence against supporters of the president goes back at least a year, although incidents were also recorded during the election cycle in 2016. The trend against law enforcement appears more recent.

Last October, a Vero Beach, Fla. man who was caught on a restaurant security camera hitting and spitting on a 67-year-old Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat was sentenced to 90 days in Indian River County Jail, a report said. The assailant had walked across the restaurant’s bar and told the victim, “You should go back to Russia, you f–king communist.”

One year ago in June, Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, was spat on by an employee at an upscale Chicago cocktail bar. The employee was questioned by Secret Service agents but faced no consequences.

The incidences of restaurants disrespecting conservatives may be causing them to change their dining habits and stay away from restaurants known to be populated by liberals.

WHERE IS IT SAFE TO DINE?

Must Read Alaska is compiling a list of restaurants in Alaska where readers can wear their MAGA hat, conservative swag, or walk into the restaurant with a Bible in their hand, where police officers can stop in for a bite without worrying about their food being contaminated.

If you know of an Alaska restaurant that should be on the “safe list” for conservatives, add it to the comment section below. Be sure to mention the community the establishment is in.

Chief Justice: No jury trials until September — at least

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CRIMINALS MAY ROAM FREE WHILE COURTROOMS STAY EMPTY

The Alaska Court System, which hasn’t held a jury trial since March 16, has just extended that moratorium on justice until Sept. 1, by order of Chief Justice Joel Bolger.

Due to the number of active cases of COVID-19 in Alaska, which the Chief Justice calls “high,” justice will be delayed for at least six months. Once jury trials start again, there will be a large backlog, which means many trials will be further delayed by months.

Bolger said that jury rooms just aren’t safe because they don’t allow for needed physical distancing for the parties, attorneys, court personnel, and a standard jury panel.

“The court administration needs additional time to devise procedures that will allow jury trials to proceed safely. And most courtrooms do not have adequate space to safely accommodate a public audience or a large jury selection assembly,” Bolger wrote.

The action effectively puts many conditions of the soft-on-crime SB-91 conditions back into effect, allowing criminals to roam free for months while they await trial.

SB-91 was unwound by the Legislature last year after it became associated with a statewide crime spree.

The Supreme Court has, through Bolger’s order, created a condition where Alaskans may once again be victimized by criminals on the loose.

“When the suspension is lifted, the time for trial will continue to be tolled for the time necessary to permit an orderly transition and scheduling,” Bolger wrote. In layman’s terms, that means there will be further delays.

When trials resume, the public may be required to participate by  teleconference, videoconference, or video feed. Those allowed in the courtrooms will be required to adhere to “social distancing, face coverings, and other health requirements imposed by government health mandates, presiding judge orders, and administrative bulletins.”

“Also to promote social distancing, court administration and trial judges may impose limits on jury panel qualification, assembly, and selection procedures. Jury questionnaires may be expanded to identify qualification and hardship issues and to expedite the exercise of juror challenges,” Bolger wrote.

Loudermill: Due process for the public employee

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By ART CHANCE

Both the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guarantee that a citizen, and in some cases a person who is not a citizen, cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.   

The Constitution does not establish a substantive right to any particular process, but rather guarantees that any process that stems from the Constitution itself, from statute, or ordinance, or by contract must be afforded before a citizen or a person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property.   

Due process is going to become very important and likely very much lied about in the coming weeks and months as we endure the lynching of the officers associated with the deaths of George Floyd and Raychard Brooks.

Before the screeches of outrage begin, while there are lots of questions still to be answered, the only evidence we have in the George Floyd case are the videos. In the videos, it is graphically evident that Officer Derek Chauvin used excessive and unreasonable force against Floyd and is guilty of some degree of homicide.  

 I couldn’t be seated on a jury in the case because I have formed a conclusion as to his guilt and only a credible challenge to the authenticity of the video would dissuade me. 

The Brooks case is much more subtle.  The reason I style it “a cop lynching” is that none of these officers have been afforded due process and it is extremely unlikely that they can get a fair trial.   

The mob is going to demand their lives, or at least their lives in prison, or they’ll burn cities again and feckless Democrat mayors and governors will not oppose them.

In 1986, a case came to the U.S. Supreme Court involving the firing of a Mr. Loudermill, an employee of the Cleveland Board of Education. The Cleveland Board belatedly did a background check on Loudermill and found that somebody named Mr. Loudermill had a conviction in Texas.   

The Board assumed that the person in Texas was their employee, concluded that he had lied to them by denying that he had a conviction, and they fired him. 

If only the Cleveland Board had called Loudermill in and asked him, “Are you the Mr. Loudermill that has this conviction in Texas?”

Employment law is replete with cases that demonstrate the old saw of “bad cases make bad law,” and Loudermill is among the best, or worst, examples.   The board never did a thing to establish whether Mr. Loudermill was actually the person that had the conviction or to establish whether or not he had lied to them; they just fired him. 

He sued and changed the relationship between public employers and public employees.

Loudermill had successfully and uneventfully performed his duties for the Board. He had achieved “permanent status” by completing a probationary period. During probation, a public employee can be dismissed for “any reason, no reason, but not an illegal reason.” After probation, an employee becomes permanent and can only be removed for just cause.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that achieving permanent status confers a “property right” in a public employee’s job. Since permanent status is a property, that property can only be taken by due process of law.   Reasonable minds can disagree with this analysis, but I don’t really disagree with it.

Loudermill v. Cleveland Board establishes the Constitutional minima for due process for public employees threatened with discipline or dismissal.

At minimum, a permanent public employee must be given notice of the charges against him/her and in such specificity that the employee can form a defense. The employee, and in the union environment his/her union representative, must be given the opportunity to respond to the allegations and to point out any mitigating or obviating facts.

The employer must give consideration to the employee’s statements; the old “let them tell their story and then pull the dismissal memo out of the desk drawer” strategy is a tell; due consideration was not given. That is the minimum constitutional duty for due process.

Cops commonly have much more elaborate process as a matter of contract or ordinance. The Alaska State Troopers have a Byzantine Administrative Investigation process in their contract that they got in their first interest arbitration around 1980. They bedeviled the State with it until we in State Labor Relations decided we’d had enough of process problems causing discipline and discharges to be overturned by arbitrators. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was an arbitrator overturning the dismissal of an Alaska State Trooper caught walking out of Long’s Drug Store in Anchorage with shoplifted merchandise. We vowed it would never happen again. First we vowed that arbitrator would never work in Alaska again, then we vowed to fix the problem.

In the Floyd and Brooks matters, there is no evidence that any of the officers were afforded any process. They were all fired on TV by mayors who were only pandering to the mob. We had a case like that here in Alaska a long time ago when an inmate escaped Lemon Creek Correctional Centers in Juneau and was later found under the bed of a Correctional Officer. 

Gov. Hammond fired everybody in Corrections whose name he knew on TV from Anchorage; he was angry. 

Nobody stayed fired.

In the Floyd and Brooks cases, the TV firings guarantee that the officers will get back pay up until a criminal conviction, and then the government will have to restart the dismissal and base the dismissals on the criminal conviction.   

The days of cops letting a DWI walk away ended in the MADD days of the ‘80s, so there was no way those cops were going to let Brooks walk away, get a ride, or give him a ride home; there is too much money in DWI charges for city governments. If you know you’re not safe to drive, pitch yourself into the back seat to sleep it off. But leave the keys in the ignition, you get hauled away for DWI. 

Young men, black and white, need to learn that if you resist a cop, and especially if you brandish a weapon or threaten his/her weapon, you are likely to die. 

You need to learn what we long-hairs of the Sixties learned: Say, “Yes, officer.” You can defend your constitutional rights later when there isn’t a gun pointed at you.

These mayors pandered and the TV firings will be like wetting your pants in a dark suit; it will give them a warm feeling and nobody will notice. If they can empanel an “OJ Jury,” they might get convictions, but few of them are likely to survive appeal. 

Unless the video is discredited, Officer Chauvin is likely to get convicted of something eventually, but I think Attorney General Ellison overcharged him in response to the mob; manslaughter was a reasonable and convictable charge. In things like this, if it is simple, you don’t yet know enough.

Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. 

Supreme Court redefines gender as ‘identity’ in ruling

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COURT SAYS, ESSENTIALLY, ANYONE CAN BE A WOMAN

It’s anything goes now. Look for flight attendant men wearing skirts, and male ballet dancers in tutus, carrying the role of the Clara in “The Nutcracker.”

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not only mean that “sex” means “gender,” but that it now means identity.

In a 6-3 ruling the court has ruled that employers may not discriminate against workers on the bases of either their gender “identity” or sexual orientation.

In practical terms, it means little to large companies like Microsoft or even Alaska Airlines, which have robust policies in place that prohibit discrimination based on sexual preference or gender identity.

But for America’s small companies, and for services such as daycare centers, personal service technicians, and even someone who cleans the women’s locker room at the local gym, the court has said that gender identity and expression cannot be considered in hiring or firing. Men may come to work dressed as women, even if it cost the business customers. A business owner’s religious beliefs will not be upheld.

The ruling is expected to have wide-ranging ramifications, because by its logic, employers can no longer consider gender at all when hiring, for example, a person who fits women with undergarments at a department store.

Businesses must accommodate and provide facilities for a person who switches weekly between their identities as a man or woman, as some transgender people do. Even if it makes other workers feel like their rights to privacy are being violated.

Acting companies will not be able to prefer men for male roles and women for female roles. Need a Santa this Christmas for your photo shoots? You cannot discriminate against women for that job, and Mrs. Santa may be a he in your family photo.

The will ultimately have an impact on women’s athletics and whether men can compete in women’s sports.

“The Supreme Court got it wrong. The word ‘sex’—still today and when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964—refers to our biological reality as male or female. It doesn’t refer to our sexual orientations or gender identities,” said Ryan Anderson, senior fellow of the Heritage Institute.

“In fact, Congress has repeatedly rejected legislation that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in federal law. The Supreme Court has simply legislated from the bench. This is pure judicial activism. Today’s ruling will have severe consequences for the privacy, safety, and equality of all Americans. The Court has rewritten our civil rights laws in a way that will undermine protections and equal rights of women and girls. It will also expose employers that are struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic to significant liabilities.

“Congress has not legislated such an outcome and it was wrong for the court to usurp lawmakers’ authority by imposing such an extreme policy on our nation,” he said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski praised the ruling.

“People should not live in fear of being discriminated against or losing their job because of their LGBTQ status. I am pleased to see today’s Supreme Court holding that existing federal civil rights law protects individuals from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is long overdue, and is significant progress as we seek to protect and uphold the rights and equality of all Americans.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a remarkable dissent, saying that there is an “ordinary meaning” to the term “sex,” as it was written in the law, and it’s easy to understand. He wrote that the meaning of “discriminate because of sex” plainly does not encompass discrimination because of sexual orientation, but refers to gender alone: “In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men.” (Pp. 11-22.)

Read the Court majority’s decision on Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia here:

BACKGROUND – THREE-IN-ONE ROIL

There were three different cases combined into one case in the Bostock ruling: A skydiving instructor who was fired because he is gay, and a child welfare coordinator fired for the same reason. Those two combined with a case about a funeral director and embalmer, who was fired after announcing he would be living and identifying as a woman.

Aimee Stephens, the funeral director, died on May 12 of kidney failure. His/Her wife, Donna, was substituted in on the lawsuit.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

(His dissent focuses on discrimination because of sexual orientation; he observes in a footnote that his analysis would apply “in much the same way” to discrimination on the basis of gender identity.)

[Read “Supreme Court decides who is a woman, ]