Hope Center women's shelter in Anchorage, AK, is causing quite the stir: The shelter is suing the city with the backing of a conservative Christian legal group, claiming that their faith-based organization should be exempt from Anchorage's citywide law prohibiting anti-trans discrimination.

Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom—yes, that Alliance Defending Freedom—urged district judges in court to defend Hope Center's right to deny its resources to transgender women in need.

The issue first arose last year, when an unnamed homeless trans woman complained to Anchorage's Equal Rights Commission that she was unjustly refused access to the shelter. Last week, Alliance attorney Ryan Tucker argued in court that the shelter should be exempt from local laws protecting trans people from discrimination—and that its operators' religious freedoms are in jeopardy. Ryan Stuart, a municipal city attorney representing Anchorage, claimed that the lawsuit was premature because the city's Equal Rights Commission had yet to complete its investigation into the complaint, reports the Associated Press. (This, he says, was mostly due to Hope Center's refusal to cooperate.)

Tucker added that permitting trans women to stay in the shelter could be traumatic to other people, and that other women at Hope Center said "they would rather sleep in the woods" than next to "biological men," according to AP. Of course, this is in Alaska, where winter temperatures routinely fall below freezing.

Plaintiffs maintain that the trans woman in question, identified by AP only as "Jessie Doe," showed up drunk to the shelter and wasn't technically denied access because of her gender identity. Tucker even claims that the staff at Hope Center paid for a taxi to the hospital so the woman could be treated for a wound on her forehead. Meanwhile, the city's legal team says the woman showed up at Hope Center the next morning and was again denied entry.

The lawsuit is ongoing, and district Judge Sharon Gleason said in court that she'd take the matter under advisement.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is notorious for backing plaintiffs with anti-LGBTQ prejudices: Back in 2018, the group successfully defended anti-gay baker Jack Phillips of Colorado's Masterpiece Cakeshop, who claimed baking a wedding cake for a same-sex couple would violate his religious beliefs. The organization is also designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.