A University of Wyoming alumna and plaintiff in the lawsuit against the inclusion of a transgender student in her sorority vowed to keep fighting to "protect women's spaces" after the case was dismissed by a federal judge last week.
Allison Coghan, joined by six other current and former members of the University of Wyoming’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, sued the national organization in March over the inclusion of a trans woman, 21-year-old Artemis Langford into the sorority last year. The sorority members alleged in the suit that Langford had "been voyeuristically peeping on them while they were in intimate situations, and, in at least one occasion, had a visible erection while doing so."
Last Friday, the judge ruled that the school did not violate any policies by allowing the student to join and dismissed the case, upholding Langford's membership in the sorority.
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In an exclusive interview on "The Ingraham Angle," Tuesday, Coghan, who has since graduated from the university, said she was disappointed by the case dismissal but added the ruling further emboldens her to stand up and "fight a lot harder" to preserve the integrity of all-female groups and organizations.
"We were very disappointed to hear that that was what he decided to do," Coghan told Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "Honestly, I don’t think any of us were that surprised, but we are not done fighting. We are here….we started it, and we are going finish it. If anything, it has just made us want to fight a lot harder just because this is something that we need to fight for and it is so much bigger than just this one chapter, this one person that’s involved. This could go out for women’s sports or anything. We just need to be able to protect women’s spaces."
The lawsuit claimed that Langford violated Kappa Kappa Gamma policies by joining a sorority despite not being a woman or making efforts to appear female. The complaint alleged that "sorority leaders’ efforts betrayed the women’s understanding of what they were joining and the sorority’s own guiding documents.
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In the ruling to dismiss the case, the judge said, "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."
The ruling continued, "Holding that Plaintiffs fail to plausibly allege their derivative, breach of contract, tortious interference, and direct claims, the Court dismisses, without prejudice, Plaintiffs' causes of action."
Though multiple women took part in the lawsuit, the sorority itself filed a motion to dismiss the case in June.
Coghan said her co-plaintiffs who are still in the sorority described feeling "a lot of discomfort in the house," adding that people have been reaching out with "hateful and mean" messages to the women involved.
"There's also been some retaliation from [sorority] headquarters as well," she said.
Attorney Cassy Craven, who is representing the seven plaintiffs, told Ingraham that the judge's dismissal of the case and his refusal to define a woman in the courtroom signals an effort to "erase" women from organizations that were once exclusively all-female.
"The fight continues on. We are prepared with a litany of additional legal filings and this increased retaliation by headquarters will not be allowed to stand," she said. "It is interesting that we can’t define women in a court of law. But this really is not about defining women anymore. This is about erasing women. Now it appears that being a woman is nothing more than a clever game of semantics. And that one can just decide that one is a woman. And along with that, comes all the entitlements…"
One account of Langford’s alleged harassment in the lawsuit detailed that, as one of the female members "walked down the hall to take a shower, wearing only a towel… She felt an unsettling presence, turned, and saw Mr. Smith watching her silently."
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The women also provided evidence from Langford’s Tinder dating app account that Langford is "sexually interested in women." Their suit also detailed how Langford has "repeatedly questioned the women about what vaginas look like, breast cup size, whether women were considering breast reductions and birth control."
"It is very important for us especially during those years of our life to have a comfortable spot where we can learn and grow together in a safe environment where we don’t have to deal with outside pressures," Coghan said. "And we’re going to keep fighting for that."
Langford’s legal team addressed the ruling in a statement: "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," Rachel Berkness said in an email reported by The New York Post.
Fox News' Gabriel Hayes and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
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