The Department of Education has announced an investigation into the University of Wyoming over its admittance of a male person into a sorority. The male, who claims to identify as transgender, was admitted as a sorority sister at Kappa Kappa Gamma.
The Department of Education, recognizing June as "Title IX Month," launched the investigation into the University of Wyoming over violations of Title IX, which is meant to prevent discrimination against women in academic environments, including athletics.
Under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the DOE backed those members of the KKG sorority who opposed the male member, saying, "Members of the KKG sorority chapter sued the sorority itself for allowing a male into the group and permitting him to access living areas of the sorority house that are restricted to women."
Seven past and then-present sorority sisters sued the sorority in May 2023 over allowing Artemis Langford to join the Wyoming chapter. Langford had not undergone any medical gender transition and was reportedly "watching the young women in states of undress, and has even been observed to be sexually aroused in their presence." Langford was 6'2" and weighed in at 260 pounds.
"An adult human male does not become a woman just because he tells others that he has a female ‘gender identity’ and behaves in what he believes to be a stereotypically female manner," the complaint read. "The Fraternity Council has betrayed the central purpose and mission of Kappa Kappa Gamma by conflating the experience of being a woman with the experience of men engaging in behavior generally associated with women."
The Trump administration agrees. "A school receiving federal funding that supports, sponsors, or promotes a sorority or fraternity, must meet its obligations under Title IX to protect its students from sex-based harassment and sexual assault, regardless of the sorority or fraternity’s policy," the DOE said on Monday. "A sorority that admits male students is no longer a sorority by definition and thus loses the Title IX statutory exemption for a sorority’s single-sex membership practices."
Judge Alan Johnson in 2023 dismissed the suit brought by the sisters against the national group, saying "Kappa Kappa Gamma’s bedrock right as a private, voluntary organization — and one this Court may not invade."
"The University of Wyoming chapter voted to admit — and, more broadly, a sorority of hundreds of thousands approved — Langford," Johnson said at the time. "With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the Court will not define ‘woman’ today."
By November 2023, two sorority sisters were removed from membership in Kappa Kappa Gamma for opposing the inclusion of men in the women's sisterhood. The two women, Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith, had been involved with the sorority for over 50 years. In 2024, the seven sisters who brought suit the previous year appealed.
"Using any conceivable tool of contractual interpretation, the term refers to biological females," said the sisters in their appeal regarding the definition of the word women. "And yet, the district court avoided this inevitable conclusion by applying the wrong law and ignoring the factual assertions in the complaint."
"Title IX provides women protections on the basis of sex in all educational activities, which include their rights to equal opportunity in sports and sex-segregated intimate spaces, including sororities and living accommodations," said US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Monday. "This Administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations."
