Smith College is one of several women’s colleges that accept trans women.
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For more than a decade, Smith College has welcomed trans women on an all-female campus. But a new federal investigation could threaten the policy and similar ones at other women’s colleges across the country.
The Department of Education said Monday it is investigating whether a Massachusetts college violated anti-discrimination law.
“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to register all-male or all-female student organizations—but the exception applies on the basis of natural gender differences, not a specific gender identity,” the department said in a news release. “An all-girls college that enrolls male students who identify as female will cease to qualify as single-sex under Title IX.”
The investigation stems from an OCR complaint a conservative legal team filed last summer about Smith’s admissions policies. One academic said the investigation is not shocking and that its outcome seems likely, pointing to the tone of the announcement and a number of recent human rights investigations where administrators have ruled against the colleges involved.
Assistant Secretary of Human Rights Kimberly Richey said unequivocally in a statement that “an all-women’s college loses its meaning if it accepts natural men.” He added that allowing “natural men” into spaces meant for women raises serious concerns under federal law.
In the complaint, Defending Education alleges that the liberal arts college violates Title IX because “accommodations of so-called gender identity intrude into sex-specific programs and spaces.” “By welcoming men who feel like women,” the institution “becomes a victim of ‘feminist’ myths,” the group said in a statement Monday shortly after the investigation was announced.
Smith College did not respond Within Higher EdRequest for comments before publication. Most women’s colleges, though not all, accept trans women.
Monday’s announcement is the latest in a series of civil rights investigations launched by the Trump administration as part of an effort to roll back transgender rights.
Most of the high-profile investigations, however, have focused on decisions to allow trans women to compete on women’s sports teams, which the Department of Education ultimately said violated Title IX.
Since President Trump took office, the administration has repeatedly said that Title IX prohibits the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports, restrooms and other intimate spaces. Trump officials say they are protecting women, but critics argue the administration is arming the law and harming trans students. (The president declared in an executive order that the policy of the United States is that there are two genders—male and female—“unchangeable.”)
In a few cases, such as that of San José State University, colleges have pushed back, saying they disagree with the administration’s finding of Title IX violations and refusing to accede to the Department of Education’s demands. But in many cases, like that of the University of Pennsylvania, colleges agreed, changing their policies to comply with Trump’s interpretation of the law instead of taking the case to court. (Colleges that do not comply may lose access to some or all federal funding.)
Lynn Pasquerella—the former president of Mount Holyoke, another women’s college—fears that may be the reaction taken, not only by leaders at Smith College, but at women’s institutions across the country.
“What we have seen [from the Trump administration] it’s an attempt to use fear and intimidation,” he said, referring to the many attacks on colleges in the past year because of their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The regulatory guidance and investigation that resulted “were not based on the law, but nevertheless led to a conflict of over-compliance and over-remediation that destroyed DEI programs, study programs, offices.”
Even after the Trump administration withdrew its appeal in the anti-DEI lawsuit Feb. 14, 2025, Dear Colleague Letter, undermining its power, few colleges have reinstated their DEI programs, added Pasquerella, now president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “I’m worried that the same thing will happen here: There will be discipline because of the fear that they will lose government funding, or they will be attacked in the ways that other institutions have been attacked.”
