Lawfare

The Strategic Use of Lawfare Against Alaska Communities: A Threat to Local Governance and Parental Rights
By Dana Raffaniello
Candidate for Mat-Su Borough Assembly District 2
Across Alaska, a troubling pattern has emerged that threatens the foundation of local governance and parental authority. Well-funded legal organizations are increasingly using strategic litigation—commonly known as “lawfare” to override community decisions, circumvent the legislative process, and impose ideological agendas that cannot win through democratic debate or public consensus.
This coordinated legal strategy represents more than isolated court cases. It constitutes a systematic effort to transfer decision-making power from elected representatives and engaged parents to unelected judges and activist attorneys, fundamentally altering the balance between law, democracy, and community self-governance.

Understanding the Legal Strategy
Lawfare differs from traditional civil rights litigation in both scope and intent. Rather than seeking to remedy specific legal violations, these cases aim to restructure governance systems, override local decision making processes, and establish judicial precedents that prevent communities from making choices about their own institutions.
The pattern is consistent: identify successful community driven policies or institutions, recruit plaintiffs willing to challenge them in court, and use the legal system to force compliance with ideological positions that lack broad public support. The goal is not necessarily to win every case, but to create ongoing legal uncertainty, drain resources from targeted institutions, and discourage other communities from implementing similar policies.

Case Studies in Strategic Litigation
Educational Content and Parental Oversight
The Mat-Su Borough School District has become a primary target for this legal strategy. When parents successfully advocated for the removal of sexually explicit materials from school libraries through transparent public processes, outside legal groups immediately filed suit to force the books’ return. This litigation directly challenges the principle that local school boards, responding to community input, have authority over educational materials in their districts.
The case illustrates a fundamental question: Should educational content decisions be made by local parents and elected school board members who live in the community, or by attorneys and judges who may have no connection to the affected students and families?

Charter School Innovation Under Attack
Alaska’s charter schools have consistently demonstrated academic success while maintaining strong parental involvement requirements. These schools operate under clear policies that require family engagement as a condition of enrollment policies that families accept when choosing these educational options.
Yet legal challenges have targeted even these voluntary arrangements. A high-performing charter school faced litigation over its well-established parental volunteer requirements, despite the fact that the challenging family had previously complied with these policies for years. The timing and nature of this lawsuit suggest it was less about genuine grievance and more about undermining a successful educational model that emphasizes parental responsibility.

Attacking Educational Choice Statewide
Perhaps the most revealing case involved Alaska’s homeschool allotment program, which serves over 24,000 students across the state. This program, which provides educational resources to families choosing to homeschool their children, faced a comprehensive legal challenge that initially succeeded in Superior Court before being reversed by the Alaska Supreme Court.
The temporary elimination of this program created uncertainty for thousands of families and demonstrated how strategic litigation can disrupt educational choices even when those challenges ultimately fail. The message to families was clear: your educational decisions remain subject to legal attack, regardless of their success or popularity.

Electoral Process Interference
The pattern extends beyond education to electoral processes themselves. When Alaskans organized to repeal ranked-choice voting—a system imposed without broad public input—legal challenges immediately emerged targeting the repeal effort’s petition signatures and procedural compliance. While these challenges ultimately failed, they succeeded in creating delays, increasing costs, and discouraging civic participation.
This represents a particularly troubling development: using litigation to interfere with citizens’ ability to petition their government and seek electoral reforms through established democratic processes.

The Institutional Response Problem
These legal challenges reveal a critical weakness in Alaska’s institutional framework. While individual cases may be defended successfully, there is no coordinated response to address the broader pattern of strategic litigation. School districts, charter schools, and local governments face these challenges in isolation, often lacking the resources for extended legal battles against well-funded advocacy organizations.
The Alaska Attorney General’s office and Department of Law possess the authority to intervene in cases that threaten constitutional principles or community autonomy, but this intervention has been inconsistent. Without systematic institutional support, local communities remain vulnerable to legal strategies designed to exhaust their resources and resolve rather than address legitimate legal questions.

Constitutional and Democratic Implications
The proliferation of lawfare raises fundamental questions about the proper role of courts in a democratic society. While judicial review serves as an essential check on government power, strategic litigation seeks to transform courts into super-legislatures capable of overriding community decisions based on ideological preferences rather than clear constitutional violations.
This approach undermines the principle of democratic accountability. When elected school boards, responsive to parent concerns, make decisions about educational content or policies, those decisions reflect community values and can be changed through electoral processes. When courts override those decisions, they remove issues from democratic debate and place them beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.
The pattern also threatens federalism and local governance. Alaska’s communities have distinct characteristics, needs, and values. A legal strategy that seeks to impose uniform standards across all communities necessarily diminishes local autonomy and the ability of different regions to develop approaches that reflect their particular circumstances and priorities.

The Path Forward
Addressing this challenge requires both immediate defensive measures and longer term institutional reforms. At the local level, communities need better coordination in defending against strategic litigation, including shared legal resources and strategic communication about the broader pattern these cases represent.
The state government must recognize that individual communities cannot effectively resist coordinated legal strategies on their own. The Attorney General’s office should develop clear criteria for intervening in cases that threaten community autonomy and parental rights, rather than treating each case as an isolated legal dispute.
Legislative action is also necessary. Alaska needs stronger protections for parental rights in education, clearer authority for local school boards to make content decisions, and procedural reforms that prevent the abuse of litigation to override democratic processes.
Most importantly, Alaskans must understand that these legal challenges represent more than individual policy disputes. They constitute a systematic effort to centralize decision-making power and reduce the influence of parents and communities over institutions that directly affect their lives.

A Call for Community Engagement
The ultimate defense against lawfare is an informed and engaged citizenry that understands the stakes involved in these seemingly technical legal disputes. When communities remain passive in the face of strategic litigation, they effectively surrender their right to self governance.
Alaska’s strength has always come from its independent communities and engaged families. Preserving that strength requires vigilance against efforts to transfer local decision-making authority to distant courts and activist attorneys. The choice facing Alaskan communities is clear: defend their right to make decisions about their own institutions, or watch that authority gradually transferred to those who view local governance as an obstacle to ideological progress.
The battle for Alaska’s future is being fought in courtrooms across the state. The question is whether Alaskans will engage in that fight or allow others to determine the outcome for them.

Dana Raffaniello is a candidate for the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, District 2.