The case of the Wyoming sorority that admitted a transgender member several years ago — which was twice dismissed — keeps on giving, now in an Ohio federal court.

An aggrieved and dissident group of sisters in the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) first made headlines in 2023 when they sued the Greek organization for offering membership to a transgender student at the University of Wyoming.

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The vicious complaint — which a judge later said devoted about 95% of its text to simply maligning the trans student, and the rest making its dubious legal argument — was written by May Mailman, a lawyer who later went on to work with Stephen Miller for several months at the beginning of the second Trump administration.

Mailman, by many accounts, was the primary author of Trump’s 2025 executive order denouncing “gender ideology” and declaring “only two sexes, male and female.”

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Now the lawyer is back on the sorority case, representing another group of KKG sisters: Kappa Kappa Gamma alumnae expelled by the sorority for abusing their privileges in support of Mailman’s first group of KKG clients and their transphobic lawsuit.

The suit was originally filed in January 2024 by two alumni members of the Ohio-based Greek organization. Patsy Levang of North Dakota and Cheryl Tuck-Smith of Wyoming claimed the 156-year-old sorority discriminated against them by revoking their membership after they publicly voiced their opposition to KKG’s trans-inclusive policy and support for their younger sisters’ anti-trans lawsuit.

That support included using the sorority’s mailing list to denigrate the sorority, malign the trans student, and raise funds for the dissident sisters, all violations of the sorority’s Human Dignity Policy. The two alumni also participated in television interviews to promote the lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma on Fox News and other conservative outlets.

The alumni were kicked out of the organization in 2023, following 50 years of KKG membership. Their lawsuit demands that the sorority replace its current national leadership and reinstate their individual memberships.

The pair argue that Kappa Kappa Gamma has expanded the definition of “woman” and its membership criteria without following the procedures required to do so, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

The women say the policy could jeopardize the ability of Kappa to have current exemptions allowed under Title IX for single-sex organizations. The same argument failed to convince the judge in two cases brought by the women’s younger sorority sisters.

Levang, Tuck-Smith, and four other plaintiffs originally filed their case in Columbus, but it was transferred to the U.S. District Court of Wyoming because of its association with the original discriminatory lawsuit. The follow-up complaint was dismissed in August, and the alumni’s case is now back in Ohio. It will appear before a federal judge, with Mailman arguing the case.

Mailman, an anti-trans Trump acolyte, currently serves as director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, an offshoot of Independent Women’s Forum, the right-wing, anti-feminist group affiliated with bad sport collegiate swimmer and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, the Buckeye Flame reports.

It’s unclear if the vicious anti-trans rhetoric Mailman promoted in the first case will find its way to the Ohio courtroom in the second, including allegations of “leering, gawking, lurking, and intimidation” by the trans sister, consistent misgendering, and her description as a “large man” with “an [aroused member] visible through his leggings.”  

“When a 6’2” person who weighs 260 pounds and has benefited from male puberty sits in a sorority dining room – staring and scowling at the young women who filed a complaint with this Court – that moment is not just a disagreement among ‘us’ girls,” Mailman wrote in the younger sisters’ complaint. “That angry glare is a threat, a threat made possible by that man’s superior size and strength.”

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