A lawsuit seeking to remove a man from membership of a sorority at a Wyoming university has been dismissed by a federal judge, who said that the court will not define the word “woman.”
The lawsuit was brought by members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Wyoming, who sued the sorority and Artemis Langford, a biological male who identifies as a woman who joined the sorority. Langford has been accused by girls in the sorority of making inappropriate comments and watching girls shower and change.
“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 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,” U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson, a Reagan appointee, wrote in a decision released last week.
In their lawsuit against Langford, six sorority members list a number of alleged instances where they say he made them uncomfortable and say that he has not undergone any sex-change procedures.
One alleged incident involved Langford having a visible erection after seeing one woman changing her shirt. The suit stated that Langford stood with “his hands over his genitals” and later asked the woman about her “romantic attachments.”
“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 girls 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.”
Rachel Berkness, the lawyer who represented Langford, called the claims against him “baseless.”
“The allegations against Ms. Langford should never have made it into a legal filing. 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,” Berkness told the Associated Press.
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Cassie Craven, a lawyer for the sorority sisters who sued Langford, said that it was important to establish protections for women.
“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.