HARTFORD, Vt. (AP) – The Hartford Elks lodge might reconsider membership for four women if a court order requiring them to be admitted is reversed, its lawyer said.

“We essentially admitted them under court order,” Norman Watts, an attorney for the lodge, said last week. “If the Supreme Court overturns the case, that might put their membership in question.”

The lodge is appealing a 2005 Washington Superior Court jury finding that the lodge discriminated against women seeking entrance, and has asked Judge Christina Reiss to reconsider her order last month that the women be admitted during the appeal.

“They don’t harbor any bigotry toward women,” Watts said of lodge members. “They want the mantle of bigotry removed. They’ve been tarred with that false impression. It hurts, and they don’t like it.”

The lodge began admitting other women in the late 1990s, the lawyer noted, adding that its exalted leader, or president, is a woman.

Edwin Hobson, the lawyer for the four women, said the lodge’s reputation is deserved, because it did discriminate against them, as well as three others who were initially plaintiffs in the suit.

Hobson’s clients were “devastated when they did not get in. You almost can’t understand how much damage this did to them.”

Plaintiff Marilyn McMillan said, “There was just a group of men who wanted to keep the lodge the way it had been for years, as a men’s lodge. I really wanted to be an Elk, and I still do.”

Fraternal and service clubs like the Elks across the country began admitting women in the late 1980s, in response to a series of court rulings and to try to stem declines in membership.

In 1995, the national leadership of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks decreed that its chapters around the country start admitting women. The Hartford Elks refused to go along, voting by a 2-1 margin not to admit women.

Seven women who were married to lodge members who had been active volunteers with the group applied for membership in late 1996. When they were denied, they contacted the state Human Rights Commission and decided to sue for sex discrimination.

A lower court dismissed the suit. But the Vermont Supreme Court reversed that decision on appeal, saying the club was subject to the Vermont Fair Housing and Public Accommodation Act.

The jury verdict last year awarded the four women remaining in the suit and the Human Rights Commission $5,000 each in punitive damages.

McMillan said a lodge officer hand-delivered her Elks membership card last week.

“I’m very happy,” McMillan said. “I plan to go over and hope I can help out just like I wanted to when I first applied almost 10 years ago. It’s a good organization.”