A Wyoming-based federal judge is giving the women suing their sorority for inducting a Wyoming transgender member 30 days to refile their lawsuit or give up the case.
U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson’s deadline issued Friday comes after two years of litigation in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma.
That’s a case in which six women are suing the sorority, accusing it of violating its own rules and imperiling its membership and future, for allegedly pushing University of Wyoming-based sorority members into inducting transgender student Artemis Langford in fall 2022.
Johnson in August 2023 dismissed the lawsuit, pointing to case law about how private organizations can dictate the terms of their own membership.
“With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the Court will not define ‘woman’ today,” wrote Johnson at the time.
The women appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in June 2024 refused to judge their case because they can still refile an improved version of their complaint in Johnson’s court.
Now with a 30-day deadline looming, the women plan to do just that, their attorney Cassie Craven told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday text message.
“The young women we represent look forward to reframing these allegations for the Court’s consideration,” wrote Craven.
Neverland
Johnson’s Friday order tells the women to get moving.
“Plaintiffs have taken no action: more than nine months after the 10th Circuit issued its decision, they have neither amended their complaint nor notified us of their decision to ‘stand on their original complaint,’” he wrote. “This case has ended up in a rather confusing procedural Neverland.”
Had the women chosen to stand on their original failed complaint, Johnson may have converted his dismissal to a more final “with prejudice” dismissal, which the 10th Circuit may have been willing to scrutinize.
Ready for resolution, the sorority asked Johnson to set the deadline, his order says.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
