The Department of Education (ED) on Monday announced an investigation into Smith College, one of the largest all-women’s colleges in the U.S., for admitting transgender-identifying men.
ED said its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is also investigating the women’s school for allowing men into women-only spaces, including dormitories, bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams. OCR said it will ultimately decide if the college is in violation of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination as a condition of receiving federal funding.
“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. “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.”
ED pointed out that while Title IX has an exception for single-sex colleges, the exception only applies to biological sex and “not subjective gender identity.”
“An all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX,” ED contended in its press release. “When an institution holds itself out as being an all-women’s college, it is not just promising to deliver female-only dorms and bathrooms, and single-sex athletics; it is also committing to maintain a student body that makes possible a particular form of sorority and camaraderie.”
ED launched the investigation after receiving a complaint in 2025 from Defending Education, a conservative watchdog group.
“Smith College has a longstanding reputation as a women’s college of exclusive excellence. But that hasn’t prevented it from falling victim to the fiction of ‘transgender’ womanhood,” Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said in an emailed press release.
“Admitting men who feel like women means that the institution — formerly one of the nation’s prestigious ‘Seven Sisters’ all-women’s colleges — is no longer for women only,” she continued. “Smith also discriminates against women by operating bathroom and facilities policies that open spaces once reserved for women’s safety and privacy to anyone who ‘identifies’ as a woman. That makes a mockery of the ‘all-women’ institution, and Defending Education looks forward to the outcome of the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation.”
Smith, which is located in Northampton, Massachusetts, first began accepting transgender-identifying men in 2015, the Washington Post reported.
“The board’s decision affirms Smith’s unwavering mission and identity as a women’s college, our commitment to representing the diversity of women’s lived experiences, and the college’s exceptional role in the advancement of women worldwide,” the school said at the time in a statement. “Our clarified admission policy reflects a women’s college that is steadfast in its founding mission yet evolving to reflect a changing world.”
Smith College told the publication on Monday that it is committed to complying with civil rights law but does not comment on pending government investigations.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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