Judge Johnson ruled that the sorority has the autonomy to dictate how it wants to define the word “woman,” arguing that the Courts should not interfere with the internal governance of private organizations.
US District Judge Alan B. Johnson dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit filed by former and current members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority at the University of Wyoming, which argued that the organization violated its bylaws by admitting a trans-identifying male as a member of the female-only sorority.
Judge Johnson ruled on August 22 that the sorority has the autonomy to dictate how it wants to define the word "woman," arguing that the Courts should not interfere with the internal governance of private organizations. "Having considered the issues presented (again), we find that the majority of the claims must be dismissed on the grounds that this Court still may not interfere with [the sorority's] contractually valid interpretation of its own Bylaws," Judge Johnson wrote in the final ruling, per Wyoming Public Radio.
The complaint was previously dismissed by Judge Johnson in August 2023, but without prejudice, allowing the sorority members to re-file the suit. The plaintiffs argued in the second filing that President Donald Trump's January 2025 executive order on "Defending women from gender ideology" defines the word "female" as a "person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell."
"We dismissed that complaint without prejudice on the grounds that the sorority was free, as a private organization, to define the word 'woman' in its bylaws however it wanted," Johnson wrote in an order, referring to the initial lawsuit, "and therefore the sorority was not contractually obligated to reject transwomen members."
The lawsuit sought to void the membership of Artemis Langford, a 6-foot-2 trans-identifying male who was admitted into the Kappa Gamma Sorority at the University of Wyoming in September 2022.
In March 2023, seven sorority members filed a federal lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma and Langford, arguing that the sorority's bylaws limited membership to "women," which they interpreted as biological females. The plaintiffs also raised safety concerns, claiming Langford engaged in inappropriate behavior, such as allegedly watching sisters while undressed and displaying a visible erection on one occasion. Langford denied the allegations, and the claims were deemed irrelevant and "unbefitting a federal Court" in prior rulings," Fox News reported at the time.
"Nothing in the Bylaws or the Standing Rules requires Kappa to narrowly define the words 'women' or 'woman' to include only those individuals born with a certain set of reproductive organs, particularly when even the dictionary cited by Plaintiffs offers a more expansive definition," wrote Johnson.
In June, the Trump administration's Department of Education opened an investigation into the admission of Langford.
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