The District’s highest court has revived a lawsuit that charges that improper payments of more than $250,000 were made to the president of the country’s oldest black sorority. Alpha Kappa Alpha was started in 1908 at Howard University. Since then it has expanded nationwide and now has more than 260,000 members. Its governing body, known as the Boule, continues to meet in the District on a biannual basis. At those meetings, the Boule makes policy decisions that are then acted on by its administrative arm, the Directorate.
In 2009, eight members of AKA sued, saying the sorority’s Directorate “violated rules and procedures set forth in AKA’s constitution and bylaws by making several large expenditures without Boule approval.”
Specifically, the suit said, AKA’s then-President Barbara McKinzie, who was called the supreme basileus, was given a $250,000 lump sum in 2007 and a recurring $4,000 monthly “pension” thereafter by the Directorate, when no other previous president had received payments. The suit also charges the Directorate acted without Boule approval. Those filing suit claimed that McKinzie didn’t allow the Boule to discuss the issue at its 2008 meeting and that they were unfairly stripped of their membership privileges for raising concerns.
The sorority has denied wrongdoing in court documents.
According to its website, AKA’s missions is, in part, “to cultivate and encourage high scholastic and ethical standards, [and] to promote unity and friendship among college women.”
The trial court threw out the lawsuit, saying it didn’t have jurisdiction because the sorority sisters who filed the suit were not District residents.
The D.C. Court of Appeals disagreed in its opinion issued Thursday. The court revived the case and sent it back to the D.C. Superior Court for trial.
An attorney for the sorority did not return calls for comment on Friday.
“The Boule sessions were held in the District of Columbia over the course of a week,” the appeals court wrote in its decision. “[The allegations] dealt with the management of a District of Columbia corporation, the entity which the Boule actions were directed. … In these circumstances, the participants could reasonably anticipate being required to defend their actions in the courts of the District without offending traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”
