(NewsNation) — A lawsuit contesting a transgender woman’s admission into the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University at Wyoming was dismissed by a judge in August 2023 after he ruled he could not override how the private organization defined a woman.

Cheryl Tuck-Smith, an alum of the sorority who supported the lawsuit but was voted out of the organization due to an alleged violation of its policies, and May Mailman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, joined NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” to discuss the case.

“It would be like if, and this is what the Kappa ladies argued in their amicus brief in that case, if you hired someone to paint your house white and they showed up and they painted their your house black, but they said you know what, I interpret this black paint to be white paint, no one would ever think that that was okay,” Mailman argued.

The case at Wyoming’s only four-year public university drew widespread attention as transgender people fight for more acceptance in schools, athletics, workplaces and elsewhere, while others push back.

The sorority sisters who sued said the trans student’s presence in their sorority house made them uncomfortable. But while the lawsuit portrayed Artemis Langford as a “sexual predator,” claims about her behavior turned out to be “nothing more than a drunken rumor,” Langford’s attorney, Rachel Berkness, said.

“Women have a biological reality that deserves to be protected and recognized and we will continue to fight for that right just as women suffragists for decades have been told that their bodies, opinions, and safety doesn’t matter,” Cassie Craven, an attorney for the sorority sisters, wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.