A proposal to raise Alaska’s age of consent from 16 to 18 took a step forward on Friday as a key part of an omnibus package of crime legislation proposed by Anchorage Democratic Sen. Matt Claman. The age of consent legislation had stalled in a Senate committee since it passed the House unanimously last year.
But the fact that it’s one of 10 bills included in the package is giving some advocates heartburn.
Raising the age of consent from 16 to 18 would fill a gap in existing law that makes it difficult to prosecute some sexual assaults that are committed against minors, the head of the advocacy group Standing Together Against Rape, Keeley Olson, said in an interview.
“A lot of times, there's just not very much that can be done with a 16 or 17 year old that's been assaulted,” Olson said. “They bear the full weight of the evidence of being an adult without being an adult. They're still a child.”
Olson is among a group of advocates who have pressured Claman, who is running for governor, to move House Bill 101 forward. It’s been sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, since it passed the House almost a year ago.
Olson and the Anchorage Daily News’ editorial board each published opinion columns in recent weeks calling on Claman to advance the bill. The Anchorage Assembly on Wednesday pressed lawmakers to pass the bill.
Then, on Friday, Claman unveiled a new package made up of 10 bills related to public safety and criminal justice, including the bill raising the age of consent. The package is contained in House Bill 239, which would stiffen the penalties for drivers who leave the scene of a fatal accident.
The other bills in the package would:
- Criminalize of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, the heart of House Bill 47 from Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, which passed the House 39-0 last month;
- Seek to speed the processing of sexual assault kits and create a tracking system, proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy as House Bill 62 and passed unanimously by the House last year;
- Close a loophole in the laws regarding sexual assault by a health care worker as outlined in House Bill 242 from Juneau Democratic Rep. Sara Hannan, spurred by charges dismissed in a case against a former Juneau chiropractor;
- Allow Alaskans to request some minor marijuana convictions prior to legalization be made confidential, included in the latest version of House Bill 81 from Sutton Republican Rep. Garrett Nelson;
- Create a new crimes of organized theft and mail theft, proposed by Dunleavy in Senate Bill 100;
- Move the state Controlled Substances Advisory Committee to the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, proposed by Claman in Senate Bill 233;
- Add Alaska Native tribes to the list of organizations able to offer confidential counseling to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, outlined in House Bill 384, proposed by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray;
- Create the crime of “airbag fraud” for selling, installing or manufacturing a counterfeit airbag, included in Claman’s Senate Bill 17.
They’re all good ideas that should pass into law this session, and packaging them together makes that more likely, Claman said.
“I think that if we tried to do them individually, many would not pass,” he said. “These are priorities. Some of them are gaps in the law that we need to close.”
But while Claman says popular measures like the age of consent bill could help propel the lower-profile items in the package forward, Olson is not convinced, she said.
“They might,” she said. “Or they might have the reverse effect, in not being able to withstand the problems with the other bills.”
For now, Olson said it’s too soon to know if any of the nine other bills could present roadblocks — the 55-page bill just came out on Friday.
But there is some precedent. In 2024, a similar age of consent provision Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray added to a larger bill with a handwritten amendment did not wind up crossing the finish line. And provisions from another bill that would have raised the age of consent died in 2022 when just a portion of the bill ultimately wound up included in a larger piece of legislation.
Gray worked with Olson to pass the more recent age of consent bill in the House, and he said in a brief interview Monday he’s glad the bill made the cut for Claman’s package.
“I am grateful that that policy is being prioritized by having it included in the omnibus crime package,” he said. “If that's the way we get this very important change in Alaska, I support it.”
Rep. Sarah Vance, a Homer Republican behind a House Bill 47, criminalizing AI-generated child sex abuse images, said she was glad to see the main concept from her bill included in Claman’s omnibus. Other provisions that would limit minors’ use of social media and restrict AI-generated sexual images of adults, however, were not included.
Vance said she was convinced the bill will head to Dunleavy by the time the Legislature leaves town in May.
“I have full confidence that everyone has a full understanding of what the bills do and won't have (a) problem with passage,” she said.
And Claman says he’s optimistic, too. He points to a success in 2024, when the Legislature passed a wide-ranging crime package he spearheaded on the last day of the session.
Claman said he intentionally included a variety of policies in this year’s bill that appeal to a range of lawmakers in the majority and minority caucuses — and Gov. Dunleavy — to broaden the base of support for the package.
“That's certainly part of the calculus,” he said.
Claman says he plans to hold hearings on the bill in the coming days and move it onto its next stop, the Senate Finance Committee, next week.
Because the original House bill the package is attached to has already passed the lower chamber, if the newly expanded bill passes the Senate, it would come back to the House only for an up-or-down concurrence vote.
