Former college swimmer Riley Gaines joined Wyoming sorority sisters in their latest court hearing regarding the acceptance of a trans woman into their group.
The long-running legal battle was back in the public eye on Tuesday after the sisters filed an appeal against a previous ruling that dismissed their claim last year.
Gaines, who became a women’s rights advocate after being forced to compete against a trans athlete, showed up to support the six Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters who are challenging Artemis Langford’s admission to their chapter by casting doubt on if the sorority rules allowed a transgender woman. .
He gave speeches alongside them outside the appeals court in Denver and posted a TikTok criticizing the Kappa Kappa Gamma lawyer’s arguments as “astonishing.”
“These girls were promised sisterhood and they got the brother they never wanted,” Gaines, 24, said in her video, while wearing a fuchsia pink dress suit.
Former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines joined Wyoming sorority sisters in their latest court hearing regarding the acceptance of a trans woman into their group.
The long-running legal battle returned to public attention Tuesday after the sisters filed an appeal against an earlier ruling that dismissed their claim last year.
Gaines, 24, showed up to support the six Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters who are questioning the admission of Artemis Langford (pictured) into their chapter by casting doubt on whether the sorority’s rules allowed the admission of a transgender woman.
‘What I heard in that courtroom from Kappa Kappa Gamma’s attorney left me completely disheartened and demoralized.
‘His lawyer said that woman is not a word with a singular definition. It has multiple definitions.
‘He even went so far as to say that the word woman, without a doubt, is not defined. He said that Kappa has the duty to interpret this word however they want.’
“It’s crazy that we have to debate what a woman is in court,” Gaines added.
Sisters Jaylyn Westenbroek, Hannah Holtmeier, Allison Coghan, Grace Choate, Madeline Ramar and Megan Kosar file the lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma and its president Mary Pat Rooney.
They claimed that Langford made them feel uncomfortable in the sorority house by observing them in intimate situations, something the trans member denied.
Langford was removed from the lawsuit on appeal and the case now centers on whether the sorority’s rules allow the admission of transgender women in general.
After hearing both sides in the case, the three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit took the arguments into consideration without ruling Tuesday.
An attorney for the Laramie, Wyoming-based sorority sisters told judges that the sorority’s national council was unfair to sorority members by changing the definition of who could belong.
Riley Gaines, front center, an advocate for women’s sports and privacy issues, speaks during a news conference outside the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Denver.
However, most of the judges’ questions and comments to the lawyers focused on whether the case was even ready for appeal.
Last summer, U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson in Cheyenne dismissed the case without prejudice in a ruling that suggested the lawsuit could be refiled in his court.
That alone should bar the appeal, attorneys for the Ohio-based sorority argue in court papers.
Appeals Judge Carolyn McHugh was open to that argument.
“It seems to me that it’s not final,” McHugh told the sorority sisters’ attorney, May Mailman, at the beginning of Tuesday’s oral arguments.
Mailman told the justices that the case was resolved enough in district court to allow an appeal. But appeals judge Richard Federico expressed similar doubts.
“The district court offers them a lifeline,” he told Mailman.
Mailman argued that by allowing transgender women into the university’s chapter, the national council and sorority president violated their obligation to sorority members to faithfully follow the sorority’s bylaws.
However, Ohio state law gives the volunteer board of the Ohio-based private organization wide latitude to define the terms of those bylaws, including who is a woman, argued Kappa Kappa Gamma attorney Natalie McLaughlin .
The lawsuit was filed against the Ohio-based KKG Fellowship and its president Mary Pat Rooney, by sisters Jaylyn Westenbroek, Hannah Holtmeier, Allison Coghan, Grace Choate, Madeline Ramar and Megan Kosar (all pictured with their attorney speaking to Megyn Kelly).
Langford described “the sheer terror of being in a lawsuit and not knowing what will happen next, especially with online threats and harassment both physical and online” on MSNBC.
A court can intervene only if such an interpretation is unreasonable or arbitrary, but that was not the case, McLaughlin added.
The arguments drew a handful of protesters outside the federal courthouse with signs that read “Save the Sisterhood” and “Women have the right to women-only spaces.”
‘We shouldn’t have to say, ‘Here’s why I need my women’s space.’ Women’s spaces must be protected, period,” Mailman said at a news conference after the discussions.
The argument that a court should be able to tell a private organization how to define a woman runs counter to conservative skepticism about big government, Wyoming LGBTQ+ advocacy group Wyoming Equality said in a statement.
“They are arguing against the right of organizations to determine their own membership,” said director Sara Burlingame. “I am optimistic that the Tenth Circuit will agree with Judge Johnson.”