Transgender Sorority Sister Wins in University of Wyoming Case

A federal judge in Wyoming has dismissed a lawsuit brought by six sorority sisters at the University of Wyoming who wanted the court to kick out a transgender member of the sorority, Artemis Langford, because the sisters believed that transgender women should be excluded from the organization.

Wyoming U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson ruled in favor of the transgender sister's motion to dismiss, writing that it was inappropriate for the court to impose the plaintiffs’ definition of a woman when the sorority’s bylaws are more expansive in their wording, the Associated Press reports.

“With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the court will not define a ‘woman’ today,” Johnson wrote.

The plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit that Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority’s rules actually prohibit transgender women from joining the sorority. Langford, the suit claimed, should be expelled from the sorority.

The judge decided that, at the end of the day, he could not overrule the parameters that the private, voluntary organization had set forth for the definition of a woman.

More than 145 Kappa Kappa Gamma chapters have accepted transgender women since 2015. According to the Kappa Kappa Gamma filing, its policy is similar to that of 25 other sororities in the National Panhellenic Conference, an umbrella organization for sororities across the U.S. and Canada, the Associated Press reports.

According to Johnson’s ruling Friday, a federal court cannot meddle with the sorority’s freedom of association by disallowing its decision to welcome the transgender woman last year.

An attorney for the sisters, Cassie Craven, said that the sisters disagree with the judge’s decision and the essential matter of defining who a woman is remains unresolved.

“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,” Craven said, according to the AP.

Langford's attorney, Rachel Berkess, celebrated the decision.

“The allegations against Ms. Langford should never have made it into a legal filing," Berkess said in an email to the news wire. "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.”