U.S. Department of Education Launches Title IX Probe into Smith College's Transgender Admissions Policy The U.S. Department of Education has initiated a Title IX investigation into Smith College, following a complaint filed by the conservative group Defending Education. The probe, announced on Monday, centers on allegations that the women’s college discriminates against biological women by admitting transgender students. The complaint, first submitted in 2025, claims that Smith’s policy of allowing students who “self-identify” as women to enroll violates federal law. Smith College, a 155-year-old institution, has admitted transgender and nonbinary students since 2015. This policy, which allows enrollment based on self-identification without requiring surgical confirmation, is common among U.S. women’s colleges. However, Defending Education argues that the college’s acceptance of students born male and its use of all-gender bathrooms and locker rooms contravene Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded institutions. The complaint references United States v. Virginia, a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the male-only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute. Defending Education Vice President Sarah Perry stated that Smith’s policy undermines its status as a women’s college, arguing that admitting individuals who were assigned male at birth “mocks” the institution’s commitment to women-only spaces. She emphasized that the college’s bathroom and facility policies, which allow access to all-gender spaces for anyone who identifies as a woman, compromise the safety and privacy of cisgender women.#smith_college #defending_education #us_department_of_education #united_states_v_virginia #calliope_wong
Trump administration investigates Smith College transgender policy For more than a decade, Smith College, one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious all-women schools, has admitted self-identified transgender women without significant public backlash. However, the election of President Trump to a second term shifted the focus of the college’s admissions policy under a federal government scrutinizing diversity practices in higher education. On Monday, the federal government announced it had initiated a civil rights investigation of Smith College, alleging its admission of transgender women violates Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. The investigation began in 2025 when Smith awarded an honorary degree to Admiral Rachel L. Levine, a transgender woman and former Biden administration official, and invited her to speak at the school’s commencement ceremony. This decision drew attention from Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of the conservative watchdog group Defending Education, who filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in June 2025. The complaint argued that Smith’s policy discriminates against “biological women” by admitting students whose assigned sex at birth was male but identify as female, while barring students whose assigned sex at birth was female but identify as male. The Department of Education’s Civil Rights office stated that Title IX allows single-sex colleges to maintain all-female student bodies based on biological sex, not gender identity. The statement emphasized that an all-girls college admitting male-identifying students would no longer qualify as single-sex under the law.#trump_administration #title_ix #smith_college #sarah_parrish_perry #defending_education
