People are used to seeing scouts selling cookies or popcorn on the streets, volunteering for different charities or camping. Soon, however, people are going to be seeing them in a courtroom.

  Over a hundred years after the establishment of the Boy Scouts of America, the organization decided to allow girls to join and subsequently dropped the “Boy” in its name.

  “As we enter a new era for our organization, it is important that all youth see themselves in scouting in every way possible,” the organization said.

  They also mentioned that people had requested this change for years.

  Since the nineties, the Girl Scouts have worked to make their bylaws inclusive. BSA has been working on their bylaws concerning who is allowed to participate since 2013 when it ended its ban on openly gay scouts. Since then, it opened the doors for openly gay scout chiefs in 2015, and transgender scouts only months before girls.

  However, the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) do not see it the same way.

  “For more than one hundred years, our organizations have worked in a respectful and complementary manner, and we have been mutually supportive of one another’s mission to serve America’s youth. It is therefore unsettling that BSA would seek to upend a paradigm that has served both boys and girls…I formally request that your organization stay focused on serving the ninety percent of American boys not currently participating in Boy Scouts, abide to what your Congressional Charter mandates, and not consider expanding to recruit girls,” President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan said in a letter in August.

  In addition to that, girls were already allowed to join certain programs run by BSA, such as Sea Scouts and Venture Scouts, but were not allowed to earn the rank of Eagle Scout, which is considered the highest rank that a scout can earn.

  Since the letter seemed to have no impact, GSUSA is now going to court. They filed a lawsuit against Boy Scouts of America for trademark infringement, saying that people were given the illusion that the two organizations were merging due to false advertisement.  GSUSA is specifically asking BSA to stop using the stand-alone term “Scout”.

  To make matters worse for the  Boy Scouts, they have also had a history of abuse scandals that date back to the 1960s, come to light. One specifically highlights a scoutmaster who sexually abused eleven of his scouts for years. The victims claim that the organization’s negligence allowed the notorious scoutmaster to keep returning to different troops even after he had been banned from the organization.

  The Boy Scouts’ insurance agencies are refusing to pay settlements to the victims. This has led them to file Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

   “This chapter of the Bankruptcy Code generally provides for reorganization, usually involving a corporation or partnership. A chapter 11 debtor usually proposes a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time,” the United States Supreme Court said.

  Both organizations have seen a lapse in membership in the past couple of years.

  At their peak in the seventies, Boy Scouts of America had over five million members. They now have about two and a half million, and Girl Scouts USA has under two million members.