A University of Wyoming graduate at the heart of a lawsuit challenging a sorority for admitting a transgender member spoke at the White House on Wednesday, her advocacy group reports.
Allie Coghan was one of the original seven plaintiffs who sued the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in 2023, saying it broke faith with its members by admitting a transgender member amid special treatment during the election process the previous autumn.
A Wyoming-based federal judge has struck the case down twice, on case law protecting private organizations’ autonomy under the First Amendment right of free association.
It’s pending on appeal in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Coghan, who was a University of Wyoming student when the case was filed, later became an ambassador for Independent Women, an advocacy group that opposes transgender access to women-only spaces and athletic competitions.
In that role Wednesday, Coghan joined a U.S. Department of Education roundtable discussion.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon also hosted university leaders, think tank professionals and education advocates, says a Wednesday press release by her department, “to address the far-left ideological capture of American universities.”
The administration called the roundtable “Biased Professors, Woke Administrators, and the End of Free Inquiry on U.S. Campuses.”
“What a privilege it was to be here,” wrote Coghan in a Thursday post on X (formerly Twitter). The post features photographs of Coghan at the White House and posing next to McMahon.
“I am so grateful to see first hand how hard this administration is working to protect women’s rights!” Coghan wrote in another Thursday post.
She added in statement by Independent Women that “what happened to my Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sisters and me on our college campus should never have happened” and that it’s important to stop a diversity, equity and inclusion narrative that she said, “has taken over colleges.”
The Rocky Relationship
President Donald Trump has opposed transgender-permissive policies throughout his presidency.
And his relationship with public colleges and universities has been fraught.
“Higher Education has lost its way and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN ideology,” Trump posted to social media after releasing a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" on Oct. 1.
His administration sent the compact to nine academic institutions and outlined 10 areas in which universities would have to change to receive preference in access to federal money.
These requests included barring admissions preferences based on sex, race, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity or religion; abolishing institutional units that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas;” and maintaining single-sex spaces for women.
Under the compact, the administration wrote, institutions would “commit to defining and otherwise interpreting” the distinctions between male and female on biological, not identity factors.
The Resistance
Multiple universities have resisted.
Seven of the nine offered the compact had, as of late October, denied the president’s proposal, Time reported.
“A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education," said Paul Mahoney, University of Virginia interim president.
Brown University’s president called the compact a restriction of academic freedom, and said it would undermine the school’s autonomy.
The Trump administration also froze $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard this year after the school refused to comply with its demands, leading the university to sue.
The school and federal government are nearing a settlement, Israel National News reported Nov. 21.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
