Alaska Airlines fired two veteran flight attendants for voicing mainstream Christian beliefs about sex and gender, after inviting feedback, and a federal appeals court has now ruled that a jury, not the company, should decide whether the firings broke federal civil rights law.
Here's the rest of the story: The backsliding of Alaska Airlines.
Be informed, not misled.
In 2025, First Liberty published a letter.
Here's what they said:
Via First Liberty:
Attorney Stephanie Taub is in federal court today arguing on behalf of our clients, Lacey Smith and Marli Brown, two former Alaska Airlines flight attendants who were fired for their religious beliefs.
The airline fired them after they questioned company support for the “Equality Act,” an extreme proposal that would remove religious liberty protection in federal law in every LGBTQ matter.
The company has embraced woke ideology and “inclusion,” while punishing those with a religious point of view. By firing our clients, Alaska Airlines sent a chilling message: If you’re not woke, you’re not welcome.
But that wasn’t always the case. The company’s history shows it once respected religious freedom. In the past, the airline embraced people of faith and religious expression, from its top leaders all the way to its passengers.
Alaska Airlines once stood for righteous, biblical beliefs.
Bruce R. Kennedy served as the company’s CEO from 1979 to 1991, one of the strongest periods in Alaska Airline’s history. He’s credited with transforming Alaska into a world-class airline.
Kennedy was known as a man of faith. He was a member of the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church for many years and an elder in John Knox Church in Seattle at the time of his death.
The president of Mission Aviation Fellowship, of which Kennedy was a member, once said:
"Kennedy didn’t separate his faith from his professional, civic, or personal life. His spirituality and the rest of his life were integrated, not compartmentalized. He was open about his faith, not forcing it on others, but was bold enough that people knew what – or more precisely, Who – he stood for.[ Jesus Christ]
Kennedy was a class act and a deeply committed Christian.
Mission Aviation Fellowship was extremely helpful to me during the years we were starting churches in countries all over the world.
They were particularly helpful to me in the third-world nations we went into to preach the gospel and establish Christian churches in remote villages.
Throughout Kennedy’s tenure, the airline included a “prayer card” with a verse from the Psalms with each passenger meal.
I remember my first flight on Alaska Airlines. I bowed my head to give thanks to God for the food, and a verse from the Psalm and a prayer card were staring back at me.
I couldn't believe it. I was determined to fly Alaska as often as possible. Apparently, millions of others did as well.
The backsliding
That exceptional practice lasted 30 years. However, after a leadership change, the company discontinued that tradition in 2012.
“Some of you enjoy the cards and associate them with our service,” Alaska’s CEO and president wrote in 2012. “At the same time, we’ve heard from many of you who believe religion is inappropriate on an airplane.”
Inappropriate? On an airplane?
At the end of World War II, Alaska Airlines helped relocate persecuted religious minorities. In 1949, the airline launched “Operation Magic Carpet,” which transported 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel.
The company’s president at the time, James Wooten, was a key player in that humanitarian effort. One rabbi recounted the impact Wooten had on his life and the Jewish community:
My business is knowing about the miracles that happen every day. One of those miracles was Alaska Airlines delivering the Yemenite Jews to the land of their ancestors. That was a man doing God’s holy work on this earth. What he did as a human being is the essence of religion, and I am honoring that man’s memory by carrying his obituary with me."
But that was then, and this is now. The same airline that once helped Yemenite Jews escape from persecution is now firing people who express their beliefs.
The case of the two Alaska Airlines flight attendants shows the threat woke corporations pose to the rights of religious Americans.
Fast forward to today, June 29, 2026:
And if you think what happened to Lacey and Marli won’t happen to you, think again.
It doesn’t matter that a company has a rich religious heritage. In much of today’s corporate cancel culture, there’s simply no inclusion or tolerance for anyone expressing a religious perspective.
Americans should NOT fear being fired because of their faith. Firing someone over their religious beliefs is illegal.
But it happens.
How do you respond to people...say an employer who demands...or worse yet, fires you for your religious beliefs?
Well, Lacey and Marli sued Alaska Airlines.
"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, last Wednesday, revived the lawsuit brought by Lacey Smith and Marli Brown, reversing a lower court that had thrown out their claims before trial. The two women, both Christians, were terminated in 2021 after responding to a post on an internal employee network in which Seattle-based Alaska Airlines announced its support for the Equality Act and invited workers to comment."
Smith’s offending contribution was a single question. “As a company, do you think it's possible to regulate morality?” she wrote, according to court documents.
Brown went further, warning that the proposed federal law would erode protections for women and girls.
“The Equality Act 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,” she wrote in the same forum, according to court documents. “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.”
Those are not fringe positions. They mirror the concerns of millions of Americans and of members of Congress who blocked the same legislation in the Senate. Alaska deleted both comments the day they were posted, opened investigations, and fired the women, calling their remarks discriminatory, hateful, and offensive. One airline vice president testified that Brown’s use of the phrase “opposite sex” was itself discriminatory because it implied there are only two sexes.
Takeaway
Consequences.
The appeals court did not declare Alaska broke the law. It ruled that the evidence is strong enough for a jury to make that call, a defeat for an airline that wanted the case dismissed quietly.
“Indeed, Alaska was fully aware that some would object to the Equality Act for religious reasons,” the panel wrote in its opinion. “That Alaska created a forum for employee discussion on controversial issues, then fired Brown after she made religious objections of the kind Alaska anticipated, provides a further reason for regarding this case as presenting a genuine dispute of fact on the reason for Brown’s termination.”
Jason Rantz, a radio talk show host, says this is a "pattern worth watching."
The firings fit a company that has spent years leaning hard into gender ideology, from gender-neutral uniforms to pronoun pins for frontline staff. They echo a wider Washington pattern in which people of faith keep getting punished for refusing the state’s preferred orthodoxy, as when DCYF stripped a Christian foster family of its license over a pronoun mandate before settling a federal religious discrimination suit. The same favoritism shows up in how Seattle celebrates some forms of expression while treating Christians as the problem.
The case heads back to the federal district court in Seattle. Smith and Brown are seeking reinstatement, back pay, and additional damages, and their attorneys expect a trial within months.
We will keep you informed. This is a huge case.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Faithful. Be Bold. Be Courageous. Be Prayerful.