A faith-based women’s shelter in Anchorage, Alaska, has filed another federal lawsuit to once again stop city officials from using a local ordinance to force the shelter to admit trans-identifying biological males and let them sleep alongside women who have suffered physical and sexual abuse.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a non-profit conservative law firm, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Downtown Hope Center. According to their website, the center began more than 30 years ago in a local garage as a soup kitchen, and later expanded into a women’s shelter. It is primarily funded by donations from individuals and churches.
The Downtown Hope Center’s lawsuit argues an updated local ordinance also seeks to shut down the center’s ability to communicate about its religious beliefs on its website and on other signs posted around the center, according to the ADF.
“Downtown Hope Center serves everyone, and its overnight women’s shelter exists to provide a safe place for women, many of whom have suffered due to sex trafficking, rape, or domestic violence at the hands of men,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson. “Women deserve a place to sleep where they can feel secure. City officials have no business trying to force the center to violate its beliefs by demanding that the shelter allow biological men to sleep mere feet from vulnerable women. This is the second attempt by the city to force Downtown Hope Center to violate its religious beliefs to the detriment of the women it serves.”
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CBN News reported in 2018 when the city first tried to force the center to accept biological men at the private women’s shelter.
At the time, the Downtown Hope Center filed a federal lawsuit against the city after the shelter referred a drunk and injured man to a hospital to get the care he needed and even paid for his taxi ride there.
The man who identifies as transgender later filed a complaint with the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission alleging the center didn’t let him stay at the shelter, where he would have been sleeping next to abused and homeless women. The city then chose to pursue the complaint against the center, prompting ADF attorneys to file suit on the center’s behalf.
A federal court later sided with the center and the city eventually dropped the complaint. At the time, the city and the center agreed to make the court’s temporary order against the city permanent.
But since the city’s first loss in court, the Anchorage Assembly has amended the same city ordinance in an attempt to find a new way to target the Downtown Hope Center and force it to let biological males sleep next to the female victims it serves.
“The court previously ruled that the initial laws did not apply to the Downtown Hope Center,” attorney Christy Allen said in an interview with The Christian Post. “So then, it seems that Anchorage was displeased with that ruling, and they wanted to be sure that those laws did apply. So they rewrote the law to basically include homeless shelters within those definitions.”
According to the lawsuit, “Women who use the shelter have told Hope Center officials that they would not feel safe if they had to sleep and/or undress next to biological men.”
“All Americans should be free to live out their faith and serve their neighbors—especially homeless women who have suffered sexual abuse or domestic violence—without being targeted or harassed by the government,” said ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Tucker, director of the ADF Center for Christian Ministries. “Downtown Hope Center is once again in court standing up for its religious beliefs. No woman—particularly not an abuse survivor—should be forced to sleep or disrobe next to a man.”
The Downtown Hope Center not only provides shelter services, but culinary and bakery job skills training, daily meals, laundry services, and clothing giveaways. In addition, it serves almost 600 cups of soup a day with 142,000 meals prepared annually.
The case, Downtown Hope Center v. Municipality of Anchorage was filed by the ADF in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.
Watch Alliance Defending Freedom’s video about the Downtown Hope Center below:
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