Two former Alaska Airlines’ flight attendants can move forward with a lawsuit accusing the airline and the flight attendants’ union of discriminating against them for their religious beliefs, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The two former Alaska employees — Lacey Smith and Marli Brown — alleged in a May 2022 lawsuit they were wrongfully fired the year before after responding to a post on Alaska’s internal communication network related to the Equality Act.

The Equality Act was proposed federal legislation that would have expanded nondiscrimination laws to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2021, Alaska Airlines posted on its internal communication network, known as Alaska’s World, expressing its support for the Equality Act and inviting employees to comment, according to court documents. Smith, who had worked at Alaska for six years, responded to the post with a question: “As a company, do you think its possible to regulate morality?”

Brown, who had worked at the company for eight years, separately responded to the initial post, writing that the Equality Act would endanger the Church, encourage religious suppression and obliterate women’s and parental rights.

“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,” Brown wrote, 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.”

Alaska deleted Smith and Brown’s comments the same day they were posted and opened an internal investigation. The company later fired both flight attendants, determining that the remarks violated Alaska’s antidiscrimination and anti-harassment policies.

Alaska found both employees’ comments were offensive and discriminatory, and targeted a group of individuals based on their legally protected characteristics, according to court documents.

The Association of Flight Attendants union, which is part of the Communications Workers of America union and represents 60,000 flight attendants across 18 airlines, filed separate grievances on behalf of both employees in an attempt to overturn the company’s decision. Both grievances were denied.

In May 2022, Smith and Brown sued Alaska Airlines and AFA, arguing that the company had wrongfully terminated their employment and the union had discriminated against them because of their faith-based comments. Both workers are represented by First Liberty Institute, a Christian, conservative nonprofit organization.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein, a judge in federal district court in Seattle, originally ruled against Smith and Brown, granting summary judgment in May 2024 in favor of Alaska Airlines and the AFA union.

Then, on Wednesday, a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, paving the way for the case to move forward.

The appeals court ruling is not a decision on whether Alaska wrongfully terminated the workers or whether the union discriminated against them. That decision will come later in the process; the plaintiffs are requesting a jury trial.

The appellate court on Wednesday found that the plaintiffs demonstrated a “genuine dispute of material fact” as to whether Alaska terminated the workers because of their religious beliefs and whether the union attempted to cause or acquiesced to their firing because of their religious beliefs.

Because of that, the case should move forward, the appeals court determined.

Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, celebrated the decision on Wednesday.

“We are grateful the court recognized the clear evidence of religious discrimination,” she wrote in a statement. The decision “reinforces that federal civil rights laws protect people of faith from discrimination by their employer or their union. You cannot be fired because your employer does not like your religious beliefs.”

Alaska declined to comment on the ruling. AFA could not be reached for comment.

The case now goes back to federal district court in Seattle for a jury trial. Taub anticipates the trial could start in a few months.

Smith said in an interview Wednesday that the unexpected termination and the lawsuit have been weighing on her for the last five years. She had just gotten married when she lost her job in 2021 and said it was difficult to find a new source of income amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She has not returned to working as a flight attendant since she was fired from Alaska.

“When I first got terminated, it took a little bit to get my bearings beneath me and feel like there were people who felt the wrong like I did,” Smith said. Now, the appeals court decision feels “really validating and exciting.”

The plaintiffs are now seeking to be reinstated to their former positions and compensated for the pay they would have received if they had not been fired, as well as additional compensation to be determined at the trial.

©2026 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.