The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into Smith College on May 4 over its admission of transgender women.
OCR opened its investigation in response to a June 2025 complaint filed by the conservative legal nonprofit Defending Education, which alleged that Smith admitting students who were assigned male at birth should disqualify the institution from its Title IX designation as a single-sex institution. While Title IX prohibits colleges that receive federal funding from sex-based discrimination, it still allows for the existence of single-sex institutions even though their admissions policies are shaped around excluding certain applicants. This is done on the basis that there would be an analogous option for students of the other gender. OCR has alleged that Smith is in violation of the sex discrimination law by allowing transgender women into “female-only” spaces.
Smith has admitted transgender women since the women’s college updated its admission policy in May 2015. Smith has also vowed to comply with Title IX and stand in opposition to gender-based discrimination. A representative from Smith told The Hill in an interview that it is “fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”
According to Smith’s admissions policy, “Smith is a women’s college and considers for admission any applicants who self-identify as women; cis, trans, and nonbinary women are eligible to apply to Smith.”
OCR’s investigation broadens the Trump administration’s attempts to limit rights for transgender individuals. Within the first week of his presidency, Trump signed an executive order looking to enshrine a gender binary based on sex at birth, and his administration has since enforced this logic, banning transgender individuals from the military and prohibiting transgender federal employees from using the bathrooms of their gender identity.
Legal experts have taken issue with the Trump administration’s leveraging of the executive order. “[OCR is] acting like their interpretation of sex as biological sex is law,” Brett A. Sokolow, president of the Association of Title IX Administrators, told The Chronicle Of Higher Education. Other legal experts have pointed out that Smith’s admissions decisions are not dictated by Title IX, according to the Chronicle.
In its announcement of the investigation, OCR did not address the specifics of the admissions process. Instead, it focused on Smith’s acceptance of students based on their gender identity and not their sex assigned at birth.
“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies — but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity,” OCR’s announcement of the investigation read.
Smith is not the first institution to face investigation by the Trump administration over its treatment of transgender students. In response to the University of Pennsylvania’s support of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the 2022 NCAA championship in the women’s 500m freestyle, the Trump administration froze $175 million of federal research funds intended for the university last spring. The funds were released in July after the university agreed to ban transgender women from their athletic teams and void Thomas’s school records. The Trump administration has also pursued legal action against the University of Maine and the Maine Department of Education over its inclusion of students assigned male at birth in women’s sports. Similar investigations are also ongoing at San José State University and the University of Nevada-Reno.
