The judge noted that the could would neither address nor seek to address issues of gender.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by University of Wyoming sorority sisters seeking to contest a transgender woman’s admission to their organization.
As LegalReader.com has reported before, the complaint was first filed in March of 2023.
In their lawsuit, Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters sued their chapter’s parent organization, seeking to compel its national-level management to revoke the membership of transgender member Artemis Langford.
Langford, University of Wyoming sorority sisters claimed, exhibited strange mannerisms, including a proclivity for “peeping” on other women and repeatedly asking questions about their sexual habits.
Attorneys for the sisters also claimed that Langford did not appear to live everyday life as a transgender woman, suggesting that she may have been taking advantage of Kappa Kappa Gamma for more personal purposes.
“Langford states that he is transgender and that he self-identifies as a woman. His behavior, however, does not reflect a man living as a woman let alone a man attempting to ‘consistently live’ as a woman,” the lawsuit said. “Other than occasionally wearing women’s clothing, Langford makes little effort to resemble a woman.”
“He has not undergone treatments to create a more feminine appearance, such as female hormones, feminization surgery, or laser hair removal,” the sisters’ attorneys said in the filing. “Plaintiffs often observe Langford with the facial hair one would expect on a man who either did not shave that morning or whose facial hair has regrown by the evening.”
Other court documents said that Langford engaged in problematic behaviors, including “voyeuristically peeping on [the Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters] while they were in intimate situations, and, in at least one occasion, had a visible erection while doing so.”
However, the federal judge overseeing the case said that the court would rule only on the sisters’ administrative claims—not allegations against Langford, or the definition of recently-contested terminologies.
“The University of Wyoming chapter voted to admit – and, more broadly, a sorority of hundreds of thousands approved – Langford. With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the Court will not define ‘woman’ today,” the judge wrote.
“The delegate of a private, voluntary organization interpreted ‘woman’, otherwise undefined in the nonprofit’s bylaws, expansively; this Judge may not invade Kappa Kappa Gamma’s freedom of expressive association and inject the circumscribed definition Plaintiffs urge,” the judge said.
“Holding that Plaintiffs fail to plausibly allege their derivative, breach of contract, tortious interference, and direct claims, the Court dismisses, without prejudice, Plaintiffs’ causes of action,” the judge ruled.
The court observed that Kappa Kappa Gamma’s national-level leadership had actually opposed the sisters’ request to have Langford’s membership terminated.
Consequently, the sisters’ legal claim had less to do with Langford’s purportedly problematic behavior than the rights of individual members within an independently-chartered organization.
“The central issue in this case is simple: do the plaintiffs have a legal right to be in a sorority that excludes transgender women?” the judge wrote. “They do not.”
“Plaintiffs request the Court to insert itself into this controversial political debate and declare that a private organization can only interpret the term ‘woman’ using Plaintiffs’ exclusionary definition of biologically born females,” the judge added.
Sources
Judge dismisses lawsuit by sorority sisters who sought to block a transgender woman from joining
