A group of Kappa Kappa Gamma alumnae returned to federal court Monday in an effort to revive their lawsuit against the sorority’s national organization, alleging its leaders improperly permitted a transgender woman to join a chapter.
Allie Coghan, one of the plaintiffs, told Fox News Digital that although she has graduated, she hopes the appeal will create a legal precedent involving single-sex private organizations and limit the ability of national bodies to override the wishes of local members.
“We were promised a sisterhood, and we were given a brother,” Coghan said. “If Kappa wants to redefine the word woman to include men in the definition, that’s fine, but they have to go through the proper procedures to do so and allow members to vote, which they did not.”
The dispute dates to 2022, when Artemis Langford, a transgender student, was admitted to the University of Wyoming chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma.
Coghan said Langford’s admission moved forward despite objections raised by her and other members of the sorority.
According to Coghan, the chapter also departed from its usual membership voting process.
Rather than using the chapter’s standard recruitment application, she said members were instructed to vote through Google Forms that were not anonymous and were connected to their email accounts.
“They were knocking on girls’ doors asking for proof that you had voted,” Coghan said. She also alleged that chapter officers warned members they could be branded “transphobic” if they opposed the prospective member’s admission.
Coghan said members and parents tried repeatedly to reach Kappa Kappa Gamma’s national leadership, but executives did not return calls and later stopped responding to emails.
She and several fellow sorority members eventually filed a legal challenge against the organization.
The initial lawsuit was dismissed by US District Judge Alan B. Johnson, who ruled that Kappa Kappa Gamma, as a private organization, could interpret its own membership requirements.
However, the alumnae, supported by the Independent Women’s Law Center, appealed the ruling to the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments in Denver Monday.
It was very surreal to be back. I mean, we were in college. We just wanted to be sorority girls, finish our degrees, graduate, go out into the real world,” Coghan said.
“I remember when I was trying to decide if I wanted to sign my name on this, asking the lawyer, am I [going to] be married with kids before there’s any sort of resolution? And he just kind of laughed at me and said, ‘I guess it depends on how soon you get married.’ Well, I actually just got married two weeks ago,” she added.
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Coghan described the situation in school as toxic and said the sorority house became a “political war zone.” She said that while Langford did not live in the house, the student was granted 24/7 access to the living quarters and common rooms, including an area young women needed to walk through to get to the showers.
“The entire dynamic of the house completely shifted. It became a political war zone,” Coghan said. “You would see him sitting in the common rooms upstairs, and girls have to walk past those rooms to get to the shower. We don’t have a space to undress to get into the shower, so you would just walk in your towel and go take a shower and come back.”
While Coghan has since graduated, she said a sense of duty to younger women keeps her involved in the case and seeking a resolution in the courts.
“I don’t understand how the feminist movement has shifted so much that it’s no longer pro-women, it’s pro-woman erasure,” Coghan said.
“I hope that it will really set a standard of woman means woman. Woman does not mean man who thinks he is woman. Woman is not up for interpretation. A woman is an adult human female,” she later added.
Coghan and her fellow plaintiff, Hannah Holtmeier, also spoke on the “Riley Gaines Show” podcast, discussing the moment they said their chapter president told them that if they didn’t like the change in their house, they were welcome to drop out of the group.
“She basically told us, ‘If you don’t like it, your values don’t align with Kappa’s, and you can drop,’” Holtmeier told Gaines. “Being told that, ‘If you don’t like it, you can drop’ and not live in a house that I had called a home for already a year and a half was absolutely mind-boggling to me.”
She echoed Coghan’s comments about conditions in the sorority house, saying women would sometimes act as lookouts for one another when they were in the shower to ensure the hallway was clear.
“It was to the point where girls would have like a lookout basically when they’re in the shower. They would text their roommate, say, ‘Hey, I’m coming back,’ and they would have to clear the hall,” Holtmeier said.
“It was definitely an unnerving feeling in those intimate spaces, especially upstairs when that’s where our showers were.”
The recent oral arguments before the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver represented a new phase in the legal battle.
The three-judge panel is considering whether to overturn the lower court’s dismissal and revive the breach of contract lawsuit.
The plaintiffs argued the national leadership of the group could not legally redefine core membership terms, including what constitutes being a “woman,” without a formal vote from the organization’s members or an amendment to its bylaws. The appeals court’s ruling will determine whether the lawsuit remains dismissed or is allowed to move forward.
Fox News Digital reached out to Kappa Kappa Gamma for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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