Smith College Faces Investigation for Admitting Trans Women

For more than a decade, Smith College has admitted trans women to its all-women’s campus. But a new federal investigation could threaten the policy as well as similar ones at other women’s colleges across the country.

The Education Department said Monday that it is investigating whether the Massachusetts college is violating federal antidiscrimination law.

“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies—but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity,” the department said in a news release. “An all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX.”

The investigation stems from an OCR complaint that a conservative legal group filed last summer over Smith’s admissions policies. One higher education expert said the investigation comes as no surprise and that its outcome appears likely, pointing to the definitive tone of the announcement and a slew of recent civil rights investigations where the administration ruled against the colleges involved.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said unequivocally in a statement that “an all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males.” She added that allowing “biological males” into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns under federal law.

In the complaint, Defending Education alleged the liberal arts college was violating Title IX because the “accommodations for so-called gender identity encroach upon sex-specific programs and spaces.” By “admitting men who feel like women,” the institution is “falling victim to the fiction of ‘transgender’ womanhood,” the group added in a statement Monday shortly after the investigation was announced.

Smith College did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment prior to publication. The majority of women’s colleges, though not all, admit trans women.

Monday’s announcement is the latest in a series of civil rights investigations the Trump administration has opened as part of an effort to roll back rights for transgender individuals.

Most of the higher ed investigations, however, have focused on decisions to allow trans women to compete on women’s sports teams, which the Education Department eventually said violates Title IX.

Since President Trump took office, the administration has said repeatedly that Title IX bars the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports, bathrooms and other intimate spaces. Trump officials argue they are protecting women, but critics counter that the administration is weaponizing the law and harming trans students. (The president has declared via executive order that the policy of the United States is that there are two sexes—male and female—which are “not changeable.”)

In a few cases, like that of San José State University, colleges have pushed back, saying they do not agree with the administration’s finding of a Title IX violation and refusing to accede to the Education Department’s demands. But in many cases, like that of the University of Pennsylvania, colleges have acquiesced, changing their policies to align with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law rather than taking the case to court. (Colleges that don’t comply could lose access to some or all federal funding.)

Lynn Pasquerella—former president of Mount Holyoke, another women’s college—fears that may be the path of response taken, not only by leaders at Smith College, but at women’s institutions across the country.

“What we have seen [from the Trump administration] is attempts to use fear and intimidation,” she said, referring to a slew of attacks on colleges last year due to their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The regulatory guidance and resulting investigations “were not based in the law, and yet they led to a flurry of overcompliance and overcorrection that eliminated DEI programs, initiatives, offices, curricula.”

Even after the Trump administration rescinded its appeal in a lawsuit challenging the anti-DEI Feb. 14, 2025, Dear Colleague letter, effectively nullifying its power, few colleges reinstated their DEI programs, added Pasquerella, who now serves as president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “I worry that the same thing will happen here: There will be overcorrection as a result of fear that they will lose federal funding, or they will be attacked in ways that other institutions have been attacked.”