The Department of Education has launched an investigation into Smith College.
The college is an all-women’s college in Massachusetts and is being probed for its acceptance of trans women, which, according the the DOE, may violate Title IX protections.
On Monday, the department said it is investigating Smith for “admitting biological men and granting them access to women-only spaces, including dormitories, bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams.”
Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any program that receives federal funding. The rule contains an exception that allows educational institutions to have single sex (all-male or all-female) enrollment.
However, the DOE has said that the exception only applies to biological sex differences and not “subjective gender identity.” Thus, according to the department, an all-women’s school that enrolls “male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify” under Title IX.
Smith, a small liberal arts college, enrolled less than 3,000 students in 2025 and says that it’s a women’s college that considers any applicant who self-identifies as a woman, including cis, trans, and nonbinary individuals.
The college has declined to comment on the pending investigation as a matter of its policy, but did say that the school “is fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”
Smith adapted its admissions policy in 2015 to include transgender students after the school denied Calliope Wong in 2013 leading to serious on-campus backlash.
Since Trump re-entered the White House, there have been concerted efforts to suppress transgender rights.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order defining gender as “sex” and decreeing that people are either male or female based on their anatomy at birth.
Then came the administration’s edict banning trans people from the military. The Department of Defense even released a statement expressing its belief that “gender dysphoria [is] incompatible with military.”
But, that was just the beginning. Since then, the administration has sued states to restrict transgender athletes on high school teams and drafted policy against gender-affirming care for minors.
According to the Williams Institute, a public policy research organization, only 1% of individuals in the United States ages 13 and older identify as transgender.
