The Daughters of the American Revolution already let men who call themselves women join their ranks.
The Martha Laird Chapter in Texas fought that policy through DAR's own rulebook.
National leadership erased that chapter and swears the vote had nothing to do with why.
DAR Dissolves Texas Chapter That Challenged Transgender Membership Policy
On October 10, the DAR's National Board of Management voted by a two-thirds majority to disband the Martha Laird Chapter in Texas.
Organizing Secretary General Marguerite Hogan Fritsch broke the news in a letter citing a bylaws violation under Article XIX, Section 4.
The letter never said what the chapter actually did wrong.
National headquarters later told Fox News Digital that chapter officers had used the Martha Laird name, its leadership positions, its communications, and its governance processes to serve a separate advocacy organization.
National leadership says conduct triggered the vote, not the chapter's stance – not its position on transgender membership, and not its fight to rewrite the bylaws.
Martha Laird members pushed for more than two years to get national leadership to define a woman as someone born female.
In September 2024, the chapter submitted a bylaw amendment, backed by eleven other chapters, that would have locked membership to biological sex.
DAR's National Board of Management voted it down in February 2025.
Member Laura McDonald called out the contradiction at the time, saying DAR's own logic holds that "a man who claims he's a woman is a woman" and gets in, while "a man that doesn't claim to be a woman" stays out.
Representative Ben Cline introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act nearly three months before the chapter's dissolution, aiming to force the same fix through DAR's federal congressional charter.
Senator Blackburn's companion bill followed in the Senate.
Cline did not mince words about what he thinks happened to the group: it "embraced radical gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve."
Why DAR Claims Defining Biological Sex Threatens Its Tax-Exempt Status
DAR's public defense rests on a technicality – the board says it punished conduct, not conviction.
That technicality lets national leadership dodge the one admission that would gut its own legal argument.
The Center for American Liberty provided legal help to Martha Laird and directly challenged DAR leadership's claim that defining membership by biological sex would jeopardize its tax-exempt status.
This exact playbook already ran at Kappa Kappa Gamma, where national leadership expelled two lifetime members in 2023 for publicly opposing a transgender woman's admission into a Wyoming chapter.
That case is still working through federal court, with the sorority now arguing in filings that its own 1870 definition of woman carries no legal weight today.
Conservative California superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw said the pattern reaches far beyond one chapter.
"Our daughters deserve a future where they never have to ask permission to stand up for the truth, and where no woman is punished for having the courage to speak it," Shaw said.
The dissolution notice strips Martha Laird's members of their chapter outright, dropping them to member-at-large status with a November 9 deadline to find somewhere else to belong.
DAR's longstanding membership policy, meanwhile, still admits anyone with a legally amended birth certificate who meets the genealogical requirements.
DAR's board did not just outvote the Martha Laird Chapter.
It erased the chapter entirely, days after Congress began reading a bill that would have forced the same fix anyway.
That is not a coincidence.
The Federalist reported women leaving Daughters of the American Revolution chapters after the organization began admitting transgender-identifying members in 2024, and Martha Laird's members just became the newest and most visible of them – not by choice, but by national decree.
Cline and Blackburn do not need the board's permission.
Their bill rewrites DAR's federal charter and makes the biological definition the law, whether the National Board of Management votes for it or not.
Until that bill passes, every woman in every DAR chapter is one bylaws complaint away from losing the seat her own ancestors earned.
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Daughters of the American Revolution Axes Chapter That Challenged Transgender Membership," Fox News, October 11, 2026.
- Robert B. Bluey, "New Bill Addresses Transgender Governance Crisis at Daughters of the American Revolution," The Daily Signal, July 15, 2026.
- Fox News, "Exclusive GOP Rep Introduces Bill to Bar Biological Men From Joining Daughters of the American Revolution," Fox News, 2026.
- Fox News, "Blackburn Unveils Bill to Keep Biological Men Out of Daughters of the American Revolution," Fox News, 2026.
- Cowboy State Daily, "Sorority Back in Court Over Trans Member, Says Historic Definition of Woman Not Relevant," Cowboy State Daily, September 14, 2026.
- Cowboy State Daily, "Kappa Kappa Gamma Kicks Out Two Lifetime Members After Opposing Transgender's Admittance to Sorority," Cowboy State Daily, November 14, 2023.
- The Federalist, "Women Flee Daughters of the American Revolution After It Admits Men," The Federalist, March 11, 2024.
