Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A faith-based women’s homeless shelter in Anchorage is suing to block the city from requiring it to accept transgender women, which it said would violate its religious beliefs.

Lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom filed a motion in federal court Thursday seeking an injunction to stop the city from applying its gender identity law to the Hope Center shelter in Anchorage. The conservative Christian law firm based in Scottsdale, Arizona, says homeless shelters are exempt from the local law, yet the city has used the law to “investigate, harass, and pressure” the downtown shelter.

“The injunction would mean that Anchorage can’t apply the ordinance to the Hope Center in order to force the Hope Center to allow men to come in the shelter and sleep and undress alongside these vulnerable homeless women,” Denise Harle, an attorney with the alliance, said Thursday.

The shelter operators filed a federal lawsuit against the city and its Equal Rights Commission in August, months after a transgender woman complained to the commission that she was denied entry at the shelter.

Because the matter is not resolved, Thursday’s filing is premature, and so is the request for injunctive relief, said Deputy Municipal Attorney Deitra Ennis, who represents the city and its Equal Rights Commission in the matter. The commission began an investigation after the transgender woman complained she was denied housing at the shelter.

The commission’s investigation has not been concluded “due in large part to the noncooperation of the Hope Center,” Ennis said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. She said the commission had reached no decision or enforcement action before Thursday’s court motion.

“There is strong federal policy not to intervene in local agency proceedings prior to any enforcement action or state court review of local code interpretation,” she wrote.

The plaintiffs said the individual identified only as “Jessie Doe” showed up inebriated after hours in January and was not turned away because of gender. The shelter officials even paid for a taxicab ride to a local hospital for the individual, who had a forehead wound from fighting at another shelter, to do “the loving thing” rather than involving police, Harle said. Center officials did not call for an ambulance because the wound did not appear to be an emergency, she said.

The same individual showed up the following day and again was denied entry, according to Thursday’s motion.

Because the city continues to pursue the transgender issue, plaintiffs want the federal court to weigh in and make clear once and for all that nothing the shelter is doing is violating the law, Harle said.

Alliance Defending Freedom also represented a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In a limited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the baker, but it did not rule on the larger issue of whether businesses can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gays and lesbians.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the alliance as an LBGT hate group, one that seeks to push transgender people “back into the shadows.”

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FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — Four Fairbanks men will appeal the rejection of their civil court case accusing the city of Fairbanks and city police officers of malicious prosecution.

A federal judge last week tossed out the case filed by the men known as the “Fairbanks Four,” the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland said the men needed to have their criminal convictions invalidated, not simply vacated, before they could sue the city and the police officers who investigated them.

George Frese, Kevin Pease, Marvin Roberts and Eugene Vent were convicted of murder in the 1997 death Fairbanks teenager John Hartman. The four men spent 18 years in prison while they asserted their innocence and appealed their convictions.

After a five-week hearing that re-examined the cases in detail, and presented the case that others killed Hartman, the convictions were vacated in December 2015.

Judge Holland in his ruling referred to a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court case that outlines how a defendant in a criminal case must be cleared before seeking monetary damages from prosecutors and police.

“Plaintiffs have not shown that their convictions or sentences have been invalidated,” Holland said.

Attorney Mike Kramer, who represents two of the men, said the group will take the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that will take about two years.

“It was a disappointing day, but the Fairbanks Four are used to being disappointed in court,” Kramer said.

The four men were released from prison after signing what they call a “devil’s bargain” in their lawsuit.

Facing additional years in prison while state prosecutors challenged their case, the men agreed to a settlement to be free under the condition that not sue the city or state for their treatment by the Fairbanks Police Department and the district attorney’s office.

The latest lawsuit, filed in December, contends the agreement not to sue is not legally binding because the men were coerced because of their imprisonment.

Holland said he applied Supreme Court standards from the 1994 decision, an Indiana manslaughter case. To be clear to sue the city, Frese, Pease, Roberts and Vent would have had to have had their conviction “invalidated by a state tribunal.”

That did not happen, Holland said, and the four men endorsed the validity of their original convictions by signing agreements that stated “the original jury verdicts and judgment of conviction were properly and validly entered based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Kramer said the judge should have focused on whether the settlement was voluntary instead of parsing words of the agreement.

“Judge Holland focused on that part of the agreement where the Fairbanks Four agreed they were ‘validly convicted’,” Kramer said. “He avoided analyzing whether the agreement in total was an involuntary, coercive agreement, in which case whatever they agreed to would have no weight.”

Alaska indigenous leaders are asking a cruise industry giant to stop using heavy fuel oils believed to be harmful to health and the environment.

The Juneau Empire reports the leaders traveled to Carnival’s corporate headquarters in London last week to deliver the petition, seeking to stop the use of the fuel as an inexpensive alternative.

Bristol Bay petitioner Verner Wilson says this fuel takes longer to break down in the marine environment and its emissions produce more environmentally-harmful chemicals than other fuels.

He says he would like to see Carnival take the lead by ending the fuel’s use on cruises to Alaska or anywhere north.

Carnival says in a statement that the petition is “well-intentioned but misguided.” The company says it treats the Artic as a “special protected zone.”

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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com

JUNEAU — Alaska Gov. Bill Walker is asking supporters to remove his campaign signs from public view.

Walker last week ended his re-election bid, days after his lieutenant governor, Byron Mallott, resigned over what Walker described as an inappropriate overture to a woman.

In a statement Friday, Walker said any reserved ad space that can’t be reimbursed will be used to make clear that he has ended his campaign and to thank supporters.

Walker and Mallott remain on the general election ballot because the deadline for candidates to withdraw was in September.

Walker has said he thinks Democrat Mark Begich would be better for Alaska than Republican Mike Dunleavy.

A large Walker Mallott sign stood Friday morning at Mallott’s Juneau home.

Mallott was replaced as lieutenant governor by Valerie Davidson.

Alaska health officials have recorded 75 cases of syphilis in the state this year, marking the largest outbreak of the infectious disease in at least four decades.

The Alaska Section of Epidemiology said in an update this week that it has requested help with response efforts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, KTVA-TV reported Wednesday.

The number of cases is the highest reported in the state since at least the 1970s, said Susan Jones, a program manager with the state Division of Public Health.

“It actually can be before that but that’s as far back as we have saved data,” Jones said.

Out of the 75 cases, 64 occurred in Anchorage and 66 were men, according to the state. Of the nine women, two were pregnant at the time of diagnosis. The ages of people infected ranged from 18 to 76, with 20 cases recorded in the 25 to 29 age group.

Health officials also found a probable case of congenital syphilis in an infant born in March whose mother had been diagnosed last year.

Symptoms of the sexually transmitted infection in its early stages include genital sores, skin rash, swollen lymph nodes, and fever, according to the CDC.

The disease in the tertiary stage can damage internal organs and result in death. According to the CDC, most people with untreated syphilis do not develop symptoms of the last stage, but tertiary syphilis could develop decades after infection.

“It’s easy to acquire syphilis by having sex with somebody with infection, it’s easy to have the disease and not be aware of it, and it’s also easy to treat if we catch it early,” Jones said.

Syphilis can be treated with an antibiotic injection.

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Information from: KTVA-TV, http://www.ktva.com

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — Residents of towns near Fairbanks have been talking to state officials about possible arsenic contamination of private wells where they live, the Fairbanks News-Miner reports.

The residents of Goldstream, Ester, Two Rivers, Murphy Dome and other areas have talked about their concerns in recent weeks with officials from the state departments of Health and Human Services, Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources, as well as the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.

To safeguard health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water at 10 parts per billion. Other limits include 100 ppb for watering gardens and livestock, and 500 ppb for bathing.

The water at the Ester fire station tested in excess of 9,000 parts per billion, which meant it was not safe to drink, cook with or bathe in, Cindy Christian of the Department of Environmental Conservation told the News-Miner. The station took the contaminated well offline and installed a 3,000 gallon holding tank, which is filled by a water delivery company, said duty officer Rilen Skieens.