Three members of a Wyoming sorority chapter who say it was bad business dealing for the all-women organization to admit a transgender member in the fall of 2022 argued that point Monday morning to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
The argument between the sorority sisters’ attorney Angela Lavin and Kappa Kappa Gamma’s attorney Natalie McLaughlin revolved around whether a sorority governing council could interpret the bylaws’ term “woman” to include transgender women.
On the one hand, McLaughlin argued, the council has the authority to interpret terms within the bylaws.
On the other hand, countered Lavin, the council can’t reinterpret a term that has been the key to the organization’s existence, purpose and membership for the past 150 years, in a way that means the opposite of the original term.
“It would be like if the Sierra Club’s internal board of directors suddenly interpreted ‘environment’ to include ‘any development on land,’” said Lavin.
Tenth Circuit Senior Judge Timothy Tymkovich and Judges Jerome Holmes and Nancy Moritz grilled both attorneys.
McLaughlin maintained that the case revolves around a private organization’s ability to govern itself, and she pointed to Ohio laws’ deference toward governors of private groups. Kappa is incorporated in Ohio, so that reference recurred.
“Kappa’s governing documents expressly assign fraternity council the duty of defining and interpreting its bylaws,” McLaughlin said, adding that interpreting “woman” to include people who identify as women was the council “reasonably” exercising that authority.
