The Alaska Legislature pretty firmly rejected Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s attempt to copy right-wing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ legislation that would effectively ban teachers from talking about sex or gender identity in schools this year, but that hasn’t stopped the governor’s administration from continuing to push it through other avenues.
In a letter sent to school districts last week, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor announced he had reinterpreted the state law requiring parental notification for sex-ed classes also to include any education on gender identity and threatened severe legal action against anyone who gives kids access to media deemed overly sexual.
“It appears that some school districts have wrongly interpreted ‘human reproduction or sexual matters’ to not include the concept of ‘gender identity,’” he said, referring to the statute that requires two weeks of notice before sex-ed classes and allows parents to pull their kids. “This interpretation both rejects case law, the common understanding of these terms, and the legislature’s intent of passing this statute.”
Both Dunleavy and Taylor, like many stirring right-wing fear over transgender youth, have frequently conflated gender identity with sex. Earlier this year, Dunleavy boosted a right-wing anti-trans advocate and called gender-affirming care “pseudoscience” with “lifelong debilitating impacts on children.”
Taylor double-dipped on the right-wing animus over schools in a second letter that threatens felony charges against anyone in the library system who provides what he deems “harmful to minors.” What that means, precisely, is unclear and likely wildly variable given recent pushes by right-wing groups to ban books from public libraries.
The effort to unilaterally pursue these policies through the Alaska Department of Law’s reinterpretations of state statute isn’t new.
After the Alaska Legislature rejected efforts to ban trans athletes from high school sports, the Dunleavy administration coordinated and passed a similar policy through the Alaska Board of Education. After several lengthy hearings, that policy went into effect this fall.
Attorney General Taylor also quietly rescinded the state’s protections for LGBTQ+ Alaskans, barring the State Human Rights Commission from pursuing many of the anti-discrimination cases it once did. The move essentially greenlit discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals “in some instances.
While the administration and Department of Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, a long-time Dunleavy ally, argue that it’s simply about informing schools of their duties under the law, others see it differently. Lon Garrison, the executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, told the Anchorage Daily News there hasn’t been an outcry about school policy and that the letter seems to be more of a threat.
“While they claim to be informing school districts, superintendents and school boards about the law — in actuality, school boards and superintendents are doing what they’re supposed to do,” said Garrison. “The way that it was presented, the way that it’s worded and its intention is to create a sense of intimidation.”
Others say it’s right out of the national right-wing playbook on culture wars as the Dunleavy administration gears up for several high-stakes 2024 elections. Those will shape the Alaska Legislature for Dunleavy’s final two years in office, determine whether Anchorage keeps a right-wing mayor who’s allied to Dunleavy, and decide the future of the state’s election system that conservatives have complained has diminished their ability to elect right-wing candidates.
“Taylor knows, just like every Alaskan, that our House and Senate are almost completely matched between Republicans and Democrats, so it’s not an easy answer to have fixed legislatively,” Anchorage Democratic Sen. Löki Tobin, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, told the ADN. “This just continues to throw fuel on a fire that one particular party seems to think is a winning election topic.”
While the Dunelavy administration seems to be picking fights over right-wing red meat issues, the last few years of elections nationwide have shown that’s not exactly a winning strategy. Either way, Tobin said it’s clearly out of step with the public’s will.
“It just seems like an escalation of ‘we don’t really care what the public wants or thinks — we’re going to rewrite the way that we all operate with no public input or feedback or engagement,’” she said.
The Anchorage Daily News editorial board also waded into the issue, criticizing Attorney General Taylor for misplaced priorities as he’s continued to maintain his silence as the state grapples with heinous acts of domestic violence.
“We have a state attorney general who appears more interested in throwing political red meat over a largely manufactured issue than in confronting a very real, urgent crisis that has plagued Alaska for decades and caused our people untold harm,” the board wrote in a piece titled, “Just what are the Alaska attorney general’s priorities?” “As priorities go, that’s about as backward as it gets.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
