The Daughters of the American Revolution dissolved a Texas chapter that pressed to bar biological males from membership, drawing fire from lawmakers who say the group has abandoned its purpose.
On October 10, 2026, the National Board of Management of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution voted by a two-thirds majority to disband the Martha Laird Chapter in Texas. Members were shifted to member-at-large status, given until November 9 to join another chapter, and told chapter dues would be refunded.
Fox News reported that the chapter had led efforts to stop biological males who identify as transgender from joining an organization founded for female descendants of American Revolution patriots. National leaders insisted the shutdown was about bylaws, not beliefs.
The fight now sits at the center of a larger clash over whether a lineage society for women can redefine “Daughters” without losing the meaning of the word.
DAR Organizing Secretary General Marguerite Hogan Fritsch notified members of the board’s action in a formal letter. The board said chapter officers had used the chapter’s name, leadership posts, communications, and governance processes to advance a separate advocacy organization.
That conduct, the board held, violated Article XIX, Section 4 of the National Bylaws, which allows discipline or disbandment for actions that discredit the National Society.
"The National Board of Management voted on October 10 to disband the Martha Laird Chapter in Texas after finding that chapter officers had used the chapter’s name, leadership positions, communications, and governance processes to further the goals of a separate advocacy organization."
DAR told reporters the decision rested on the use of chapter authority and resources. It said the vote was not based on members’ views about eligibility, their push to change the bylaws, or their right to advocate for different national rules.
The dissolution letter did not spell out the specific acts that crossed the line, and it did not name the outside advocacy group. That gap has left critics unconvinced.
The Martha Laird Chapter, with roots dating to 1942, had become a focal point for members who wanted DAR membership tied to biological sex. In September 2024, the chapter and 11 other chapters submitted a proposed bylaw amendment to define eligibility that way.
In February 2025, the National Board of Management rejected the proposal. Chapter member Laura McDonald did not hide her reaction.
"The rejection by the National Board of Management of our proposal to define a woman in our bylaws sadly confirms what we knew all along, that leadership is taking a political stance which is not based on fears of the loss of 501(c)(3) nonprofit status."
McDonald had earlier told reporters the society’s posture created an obvious contradiction: a man who claims to be a woman could join, while a man who does not make that claim could not. The Center for American Liberty gave the chapter legal help as it challenged leadership claims that excluding transgender applicants might threaten tax-exempt status.
In June 2026, national members again rejected a resolution to add further membership restrictions. Four months later, the Texas chapter was gone.
Conservative California superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw framed the outcome as punishment for women who refused to yield.
"The women of the Martha Laird Chapter in Texas stood their ground. They sought to preserve a definition of "Daughters" based on biological sex and asked for a clear vote. On October 10, national leadership dissolved their chapter."
Shaw added that women who stood on conviction watched a chapter older than most living members get wiped out, and she asked why anyone should be punished for defending the definition of the organization itself.
Months before the October vote, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act. The bill would amend DAR’s congressional charter to restrict membership to biological women. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., later filed companion legislation in the Senate.
Cline did not say much about the direction he sees inside the society.
"Rather than honoring and preserving a lineage-based organization for women, it has embraced radical gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve."
The New York Post likewise reported the two-thirds disbandment vote, the society’s resource-misuse rationale, and the parallel push in Congress to draft a biological-sex limit into the charter. Those bills now sit alongside other contested cultural and procedural fights in Washington, including a federal judge’s dismissal of a DOJ challenge to California’s trans athlete policy on procedural grounds.
DAR has maintained that longstanding policy already allowed women with legally amended birth certificates to join if they met genealogical requirements. National members’ June rejection of tighter rules showed the internal majority was not moving toward the Texas chapter’s position. Leadership’s later insistence that the disbandment was about process, not substance, has not settled the argument for members who spent two years trying to put a clear definition in writing.
Founded in 1890, DAR exists as a lineage organization for female descendants. The Martha Laird Chapter’s supporters say a group called “Daughters” cannot treat sex as optional without gutting its reason for being. National officers answer that chapters do not get to turn DAR machinery into a vehicle for outside advocacy, and that Article XIX, Section 4 exists precisely for that kind of breach.
Both things can be described from the record. What the record still does not show is the concrete roster of emails, votes, letterhead uses, or governance steps the board found discrediting. Without those details, the society’s “not the views” assurance reads to critics as a convenient shield after a multi-year campaign to keep men out of a women’s hereditary order.
Congressional Republicans are treating the charter as the next pressure point. Cline’s bill and Blackburn’s Senate companion would take the eligibility fight out of internal bylaws and draft a biological-women standard into federal law governing the organization. That effort lands in a House calendar already strained by competing priorities, a dynamic familiar from other stalled items after leadership shortened the House schedule before the midterms.
Individual Martha Laird members keep their DAR membership. The chapter does not. Dues come back. The November 9 transfer deadline forces a choice: fold into another chapter or remain at large. The national board got its two-thirds vote. It did not get a quiet ending.
Shaw’s closing warning was aimed at the next generation. She said daughters deserve a future in which they never have to ask permission to stand for the truth, and in which no woman is punished for having the courage to speak it. In Texas, a chapter that tried to force a vote on the meaning of “Daughters” no longer exists to cast one.
Similar partisan accountability fights continue elsewhere in the system, from high-profile DOJ moves in disputed political cases to shifting Senate races tracked after new candidates entered open seats. The DAR dispute is smaller in scale and no less plain in principle.
A women’s lineage society that cannot say what a woman is will not long persuade the public it still knows what a Daughter is.
