University of Wyoming Sorority Sisters’ Lawsuit to Block Trans Student Member Is Tossed By Judge

This article was originally published by Them.

A trans student at the University of Wyoming will be allowed to continue her membership in a sorority after a judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging her eligibility for admission.

Six members of the university’s chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity filed a lawsuit against the organization in April after Artemis Langford, a rising junior, was admitted in the fall of 2022. The complaint utilizes a number of transmisogynist tropes to argue that Langford should not have been admitted to the sorority; it also misgenders her throughout. Despite the fact that Langford does not live at the sorority house and does not plan to during the upcoming academic year, the complaint alleges that Langford’s participation in sorority activities at the house has proven problematic, claiming that she has taken pictures of sorority members without consent, watched sorority members changing, and has asked inappropriate questions.

This is despite the fact that some of Langford’s sorority sisters have come to her defense — for example, they physically blocked a sign displayed by a local church elder that reportedly targeted Langford. In a recent profile in the local publication WyoFile, Langford herself also stated that her only regret was “how much pain the lawsuit has caused my sisters caught in between all this.”

Langford’s attorney, Rachel Berkness, also called the allegations in the lawsuit “horrible, false, and causing harm to Artemis and other trans people” in a statement to WyoFile.

“The personal attacks are reminiscent of every attack against queer and trans people throughout history. One sorority sister even admitted that the worst allegation against Artemis didn’t actually happen, but they’ve never corrected that misstatement before the Court,” Berkness added.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson issued a 41-page ruling dismissing the lawsuit. He argued that a federal court had no right to dictate the rules of the sorority, which has had a trans-inclusive policy since 2018.

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

He also nodded to the fact that very little of the plaintiffs’ complaint had to do with any actual legal claims, and that most of the 72-page document consisted of unverified personal smears. “If Plaintiffs wish to amend their complaint, the Court advises Plaintiffs that they devote more than 6% of their complaint to their legal claims against Defendants,” Johnson said in a footnote, additionally asking the plaintiffs to “provide more factual detail.”

The lack of evidence for the sorority sisters’ claims didn’t stop right-wing media from pouncing on the story. The plaintiffs appeared on Megyn Kelly’s podcast and on Fox News in May, with Caitlyn Jenner appearing on the network the same month to call Langford “a perverted, sexually deviant male.” Right-wing media has continued to have a field day with the case, with Fox News, the National Review, Newsweek, and others publishing articles about the case that fixate on the baseless allegations of sexual predation.

In her recent WyoFile profile, Langford said, “I love this state. I love this campus and community. And I just hope that they’d see me as the person I am and not the ideology that they perceive me as.”

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