## Facts

- The State of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage offered employment benefits, including health insurance, to employees’ spouses but not to employees’ unmarried domestic partners.
- Alaska law barred same-sex couples from marrying, making same-sex couples categorically ineligible for spouse-based benefits.
- Alaska Civil Liberties Union and several public employees with same-sex domestic partners challenged the spouse-only benefits limitation under the Alaska Constitution’s equal protection clause.
- The superior court granted summary judgment to the State and Municipality, treating the classification as married versus unmarried and upholding it based on cost, administrative efficiency, and promoting marriage.
- Plaintiffs appealed, and defendants argued the state Marriage Amendment foreclosed the equal protection challenge.

## Issues

1. Whether the Alaska Marriage Amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman bars an equal protection claim seeking equal access to public employee benefits for same-sex domestic partners.
2. Whether spouse-only public employment benefits violate Alaska’s equal protection clause when same-sex couples cannot marry and thus can never qualify.
3. What comparison class and level of scrutiny apply under Alaska’s sliding-scale equal protection analysis.

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court reversed the superior court’s summary judgment for the State and Municipality and remanded.
- The Court held the Marriage Amendment did not bar the lawsuit because it addressed marital status, not the distribution of employment benefits.
- The Court held the spouse-only benefits schemes violated Alaska’s equal protection clause as applied to employees with same-sex domestic partners who were legally unable to marry.
- The Court required public employers to cure the equal protection violation, including by extending equivalent benefits to same-sex domestic partners or restructuring benefits in a constitutionally permissible manner.

## Legal Principles

- Alaska applies a sliding-scale equal protection test that can require more searching review than federal rational-basis review, depending on the interest affected and the nature of the classification.
- In evaluating an equal protection claim, courts must select the proper comparison class; here, the relevant comparison was between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, whether or not married, because only opposite-sex couples could marry and become eligible for benefits.
- A facially neutral “spouse-only” rule can create unconstitutional disparate treatment when legal barriers make one group permanently unable to satisfy the condition.
- Cost and administrative efficiency may be legitimate governmental purposes, but fiscal concerns alone generally do not justify discriminatory treatment under Alaska equal protection when the burden falls on an identifiable group.
- A “promoting marriage” justification cannot support excluding same-sex couples from spouse-based benefits when they are legally unable to marry, because the exclusion provides no incentive they can act upon and lacks a sufficiently close relationship to the asserted goal.

## Conclusion

The Alaska Supreme Court held that limiting public employment benefits to spouses, in a system where same-sex couples were barred from marriage, denied equal protection under the Alaska Constitution and required the government to extend equal benefits or otherwise eliminate the unequal treatment without changing the constitutional definition of marriage.


Alaska Civil Liberties Union v. State, 122 P.3d 781 (Alaska 2005)