ALASKA
City approves draft of wide-ranging equal rights law
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska city council approved a draft ordinance to protect equal rights for residents covering a range of personal, cultural and social circumstances.
The first reading of an equal rights ordinance that passed last Thursday would prohibit discrimination based on factors including ethnicity, national origin, religion and marital status, The Ketchikan Daily News reported Tuesday.
The ordinance would also protect citizens from discrimination stemming from disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, pregnancy and parenthood.
Ketchikan Mayor Bob Sivertsen said the ordinance would be a “living document” that can be amended and updated as new information arises.
City Manager Karl Amylon and City Attorney Mitch Seaver will be asked to assess the proposal, Sivertsen said.
Council Member Janalee Gage listed various forms of discrimination faced by citizens that the ordinance aims to prevent, including actions by businesses toward consumers such as refusing service based on personal attributes or life situations.
As examples she cited banks changing a primary account holder from a woman to a man without consent or trainee social workers refusing to counsel gay clients.
Council Member Dick Coose was the lone dissenting vote, saying he wanted to implement changes in the proposal’s wording to “give equal rights and protection to both individuals and businesses.”
The proposed ordinance is scheduled for a second reading at a council meeting July 16.
Some Alaska cities and boroughs have laws against discrimination based on gender expression or sexual orientation, but the state does not.
The Ketchikan ordinance comes a month after up to 200 people attended a rally to support LGBTQ rights when a florist declined to sell flowers for a same-sex wedding.
Tommy Varela and a friend organized the June 5 rally after Varela’s mother was informed Heavenly Creations florist in Ketchikan would not provide flowers for his wedding ceremony when the company learned there were two grooms.
OREGON
Ex-deputy pleads guilty to misconduct for explicit photos
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — A former Jackson County sheriff’s deputy has pleaded guilty to a charge of official misconduct in Jackson County Circuit Court.
Roger Campbell, 39, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the misdemeanor charge, the Mail Tribune reported. The charge stemmed from evidence uncovered in October 2019 that Campbell had taken sexually explicit photos of himself while in uniform in his patrol car and sent them to an acquaintance.
An Oregon State Police examiner was investigating the woman’s phone in an unrelated case and found the photos of Campbell taken May 5, 2019, according to Jackson County District Attorney Beth Heckert.
State police subpoenaed the records for Campbell’s phone but detectives found it had been wiped clean. Heckert said the action could have resulted in an evidence tampering charge if Campbell had not pleaded guilty to the misconduct charge.
Heckert said when she contacted the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training to notify them of Campbell’s criminal case, she learned he had already signed a stipulated order nullifying his police certificates from the state. He will not be able to work as a law enforcement officer in Oregon again, she said, though it’s not impossible that Campbell could be hired as a law enforcement officer in another state.
Campbell’s attorney, Peter Carini, declined to comment.
Judge Lorenzo Mejia sentenced Campbell to 11 months bench probation, which means he will not be supervised by a probation officer. He will also pay a $1,300 fine rather than doing community service.
NEW YORK
July 14 bail hearing date set for Epstein’s ex-girlfriend
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend will appear remotely by video for a July 14 courthouse arraignment and bail hearing on charges she recruited girls for him to sexually abuse over two decades ago, a judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan set the date in an order as she announced special arrangements to allow limited public access to the video feed of Ghislaine Maxwell facing charges for the first time in Manhattan federal court next week.
The 58-year-old British socialite was arrested last week at a $1 million estate she bought months ago in New Hampshire, where prosecutors say she had been hiding after Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan lockup last August. At the time, Epstein, 66, was facing sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell was brought to New York City by the U.S. Marshals Service on Monday, when she was housed at a Brooklyn federal detention center.
Her lawyers did not return a message seeking comment, though they said in court papers that they spoke with her Monday evening.
Prosecutors say they plan to ask that Maxwell be kept incarcerated pending trial on the grounds that she has the money, the overseas connections and the incentive to flee. They said she also was a citizen of the U.S., the United Kingdom and France.
Besides a telephone feed available to the public for the hearing, the judge said a video feed of the remote proceedings also will be set up in the courthouse jury assembly room.
“Due to social distancing requirements, seating will be extremely limited,” the judge wrote. All visitors to the courthouse will also have their temperatures checked and face masks will be required, she added.
In an indictment unsealed last week, prosecutors relied on statements by three women who alleged they were recruited by Maxwell and sexually abused by Epstein from 1994 through 1997. The court papers alleged that the abuse began when one of them was as young as 14 and occurred at residences in Palm Beach, Florida; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and London.
Maxwell has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and called some of the claims against her “absolute rubbish.”
