Sorority’s Lawsuit to Oust Trans Sister Dismissed

A federal judge in Wyoming dismissed a lawsuit filed by members of a University of Wyoming sorority to block a transgender woman from joining, with the judge saying he could not proceed with the lawsuit and that his court “will not define a ‘woman’ today.”

The issue is that the bylaws of the national Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority also do not define a woman, Wyoming U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson wrote in his ruling dismissing the case, The New York Post reported Tuesday. 

“With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the court will not define a ‘woman’ today,” Johnson wrote in his ruling Friday, noting that not only did the sorority’s University of Wyoming chapter vote to induct trans student Artemis Langford last year, “a sorority of hundreds of thousands approved” Langford. 

Six members of the university’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in March sued the national sorority organization, its national council president, and Langford, who had joined the chapter in September 2022.

The sorority members were seeking to have Langford’s membership thrown out and to be awarded unspecified damages. 

Johnson, though, said that he could not invade the national organization’s “freedom of expressive association.”

The women in Wyoming were also claiming that Langford was a “sexual predator” who got physically aroused around them and that she, who was identified under the male pseudonym Terry Smith in the lawsuit, made the sorority sisters feel uneasy. 

Rachel Berkness, Langford’s attorney, denied their claims as “cruel rumors.” 

“The allegations against Ms. Langford should never have made it into a legal filing,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press. “They are nothing more than cruel rumors that mirror exactly the type of rumors used to vilify and dehumanize members of the LGBTQIA+ community for generations. And they are baseless.”

The women told Megyn Kelly on her podcast in May that they “live in constant fear in our home” with Langford present, and that the trans student was staring at women without talking for hours. 

“It is seriously an only-female space,” one of the women said. “It is so different than living in the dorms, for instance, where men and women can co-mingle on the floors. That is not the case in a sorority house. We share just a couple of main bathrooms on the upstairs floor.”

The Wyoming case has gathered national attention as issues involving transgender rights for students and athletes have sparked debates nationwide.

In May, Kari Kittrell Poole, the executive director of the sorority, told the Associated Press that the lawsuit filed by the students against the national organization “contains numerous false allegations and that Kappa Kappa Gamma, with more than 250,000 members in 140 chapters in the United States and Canada, doesn’t discriminate against gender identity.”

Cassie Craven, an attorney for the sorority sisters, said they will continue to fight for the rights of biological women, and that they disagree with the court’s ruling.

Craven also said that the Wyoming chapter’s bylaws lack a proper definition of who should be classified as a woman.

“Women have a biological reality that deserves to be protected and recognized, and we will continue to fight for that right just as women suffragists for decades have been told that their bodies, opinions, and safety doesn’t matter,” she said.