LaFrance appoints retired municipal lawyer to Anchorage Equal Rights Commission

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has appointed Linda Johnson, a retired lawyer who spent years arguing cases before the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, to a seat on it. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on her confirmation Wednesday.

The commission investigates discrimination complaints in employment, housing, public accommodations, educational institutions and municipal practices under Anchorage's equal rights law, according to its website. Nine commissioners, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the Assembly, oversee the agency.

Johnson left the Municipality's law department in April and is now retired. She was an assistant municipal attorney from 2019 to 2023 and again from 2024 until this spring, handling labor, employment, civil rights and public safety cases, according to her resume. Earlier, she was the city's deputy and interim municipal attorney from 1999 to 2004 and a partner at the Anchorage firm Clapp, Peterson, Tiemessen, Thorsness & Johnson from 2005 to 2019. Her resume lists work before the commission in all three jobs.

A Dimond High School graduate, Johnson earned her law degree from the University of Denver in 1989. Until then, she spent her summers managing her family's commercial salmon set-net beach in Kenai, supervising five to eight workers. Her resume also lists her 1981 Linfield College volleyball team, inducted into the school's athletic hall of fame in 2011, and says she now volunteers weekly at an elementary school.

If confirmed, she would fill a vacant seat for a term that runs through Oct. 14, 2029, according to the appointment memo.