The Education Department has launched an investigation into whether Smith College, an all-women’s school in Massachusetts, violated federal sex discrimination laws by admitting transgender women.
The department’s Office of Civil Rights said in a press release it will determine whether the private liberal arts school in Northampton violated Title IX, a federal law that bars sex discrimination, by “admitting biological men and granting them access to women-only spaces, including dormitories, bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams.”
The move fits the administration’s pattern of using Title IX to take aim at trans rights. Last year, Trump signed an executive order banning trans women and girls from competing in female sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, in response, changed its policy to only allow athletes assigned female at birth to compete in women’s sports in order to comply with the executive order. The Education Department last month also rolled back Obama- and Biden-era resolution agreements to require schools to limit the definition of discrimination to biological sex rather than gender identity.
Smith College was founded in 1871 as an institution exclusively for women. It became the focus of a movement to include trans students in single-gender colleges when applicant Rose Wong said she was rejected from the college in 2013 because of her trans identity. The school updated its admissions policy in 2015 to include trans women amid pressure from some students and members of the community. Similar policy changes were adopted by other women’s colleges that year, including by Barnard College and Wellesley College.
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Smith College did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment. The school told The New York Times in a statement that it is “fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”
It’s unclear how many trans students are enrolled at Smith. Trump and the Republican Party have made the clawing back of trans rights central to their agenda, though just 1% of the total United States population ages 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults, according to the Williams Institute, a public policy research institute focused on sexual orientation and gender issues.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.