Education Dept. opens Title IX probe into Smith College over transgender admissions policy

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation Monday into Smith College, one of the nation’s largest all-women’s colleges, over its policy of admitting transgender women, raising questions about whether the Massachusetts institution can continue to claim federal protections reserved for single-sex schools.

The probe will examine whether Smith violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex-based discrimination in education programs that receive federal financial assistance.

“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey in the department’s announcement. “Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law. The Trump Administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense.”

The department’s position is that Title IX’s single-sex exception, which permits colleges to enroll exclusively male or female student bodies, applies on the basis of biological sex, not gender identity, and that a women’s college admitting transgender students would therefore forfeit that exemption.

Smith, founded in 1871 and opened in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1875, has admitted transgender women since 2015, when its board of trustees voted to alter the college’s admissions policy. Under its current policy, the school considers for admission “any applicants who self-identify as women,” with cisgender, transgender and nonbinary women all eligible to apply.

The investigation stems from a complaint filed with the Office for Civil Rights on June 20, 2025, by Defending Education, a conservative legal group that alleged Smith’s admissions practices ran afoul of federal law. In a statement Monday, Defending Education said the college was “falling victim to the fiction of ’transgender’ womanhood” by admitting transgender students.

A Smith College spokesperson confirmed that the institution had received notice of the investigation but said the college would not comment further on the matter while it is ongoing.

“The college is fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws,” the spokesperson said.

Critics of the probe pushed back sharply. Shannon Minter, an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights who has worked on multiple lawsuits challenging the administration’s transgender policies, called the investigation an “ominous” case of government overreach into private institutions. Mr. Minter said the use of Title IX in this context represents a “misuse and weaponization of anti-discrimination laws to do the very opposite of the thing those laws were enacted for,” arguing that Title IX was designed to protect against sex-based discrimination, including discrimination against transgender people.

One higher education expert said the investigation’s outcome appeared likely, pointing to the definitive tone of the announcement and a pattern of recent civil rights probes in which the administration has ruled against colleges.

The majority of women’s colleges in the United States, though not all, currently admit transgender women. The Smith investigation could have broad implications for those institutions’ federal standing.