Social distancing, masking and her ban from flying on Alaska Airlines may all be over, but former Alaska state legislator Lora Reinbold is still fighting what she feels is the good fight.
Reinbold, an extreme-right Eagle River Republican, made loads of headlines during the pandemic for refusing to follow basic precautions to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the halls of the Capitol — where she was escorted from a hearing and ultimately removed from the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — to the airport concourse — where she earned herself a temporary ban from flying on Alaska Airlines for her “continued refusal to comply with employee instruction regarding the current mask policy.”
While so much of that feels like a lifetime ago, Reinbold hasn’t let it go. No matter how many apology cakes she sent.
The Republican, who left office amid mounting legal fees related to a case where she had blocked people from viewing her official social media accounts, has been tilting at the airline for years in a long-shot attempt to be vindicated through a lawsuit accusing the private company of violating her constitutional rights.
Last week, her quest brought her before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where, over a meandering 30 minutes, Reinbold argued that the Ninth Circuit should overturn the 2024 dismissal of her case against the airline.
“I can tell you, the flight was 100% peaceful. I went ahead and boarded the plane, 100% peaceful. Got off. I honestly thought it was a joke when I got banned,” she told a panel of judges who never really got a satisfying answer about why Alaska Airlines should be treated as a joint actor subject to the same rules as the federal government.
Reinbold, it’s worth noting, is representing herself.
Reinbold’s claims of discrimination and the violation of her civil rights faced an uphill battle of explaining why a private company like Alaska Airlines has to abide by the U.S. Constitution or how a plane counts as a “public accommodation” under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That’s a point the judges frequently tried to tease out during the hearing, with little success.
Instead, Reinbold’s arguments frequently strayed from legal grounds to personal grievance.
“They gave me absolutely no fair notice before this,” Reinbold said at another point. “They discriminated. They targeted me, and they denied a senator — me as a senator — on the monopoly carrier. I was in furtherance of my constitutional duties, and they blocked any meaningful access to the Capitol to and from, and I think that’s absolutely critical.”
She told the judges that it was a matter of standing up for what’s right.
“This is a golden opportunity. You need to answer the question: may joint actors that get federal money, saying they’re upholding a federal mandate, can they violate (Section) 1983 (of the) Civil Rights (Act)?” she asked, “And then the only due process that’s given is behind closed corporate doors?”
The three-judge panel seemed skeptical, with several asking on what grounds the private airline should be treated like a state actor. That’s a point that the attorney representing Alaska Airlines seized upon during his time in front of the judges, noting that
“There’s no constitutional right to fly,” said Richard Grotch, the attorney representing Alaska Airlines. “There’s certainly no constitutional right to fly Alaska.”
Grotch noted that the judge in 2024 found that a key failure in Reinbold’s original lawsuit was what Alaska Airlines or a handful of individuals named in the suit are actually accused of doing. And as for the mask exemption that Reinbold claimed to have, he stressed that she has still never provided the doctor’s note supporting her exemption.
“You would have needed to have gone through the process in advance,” he said. “You can’t just show up at the airport and say, ‘Hi, I have a mask exemption.’”
The judges took the appeal under advisement and will issue a decision at a later date.
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 Bluesky.
