Feds Open Title IX Investigation Into Smith College Over Transgender Policies, Female Spaces
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will determine whether the college violated Title IX by allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating Smith College over its policies admitting biological men who identify as women and allowing them into women’s spaces.
The OCR’s announcement follows a complaint filed by the education advocacy group Defending Ed, alleging the all-female school’s trans-inclusive policies discriminate based on sex, in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX).
We covered the story last summer here.
Smith is a private liberal arts college for women, one of the largest in the country, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. Under its admission policy, “people who identify as women—cis, trans and nonbinary women—are eligible to apply.”
Once admitted, biological males have full access to the school’s “all-gender” bathrooms and locker rooms.
Students who object to sharing the bathroom or undressing with members of the opposite sex risk investigation and punishment for “bigotry” by the school’s “Bias Response Team,” according to Defending Ed.
Defending Ed’s complaint alleges that Smith discriminates against women on the basis of sex by admitting males who identify as women (“self-identified transgender women”) and by permitting male students to use intimate facilities designated for women.
In a statement announcing the OCR probe, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey remarked, “An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males.”
That may be true, but I would point out that Title IX’s admissions provision does not apply to private undergraduate colleges, regardless of whether they receive federal funding.
The OCR’s announcement simply states its investigation “will determine whether the college violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) by allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces.”
Ultimately, that will be the deciding question. And the Administration made its position on that question crystal clear last year when it settled with what Education Secretary Linda McMahon called “one of the most well-known offenders of Title IX”—the University of Pennsylvania.
The Department found that Penn violated Title IX by allowing males to compete in women’s sports and to occupy women-only intimate facilities. Faced with losing federal funding if it failed to comply with the government’s demands, Penn settled.
“[W]e advise every institution that is currently violating women’s rights under Title IX to follow suit—not just in college sports, but in K-12 and every other institution covered by Title IX,” Secretary McMahon warned in a statement announcing the resolution.
Penn’s July 2025 agreement “set the tone for all other educational institutions,” she added earlier this year.
Regardless of its single-sex status, Smith risks a Title IX finding—like the one against Penn—that allowing biological males into women’s dormitories, bathrooms, and locker rooms violates Title IX’s protections for female students.
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Comments
Smith College: We’re a college that caters to the specific needs of women by excluding men, except if you’re a mentally ill man then the locker room door is wide open so you can frolic with all the naked girls.
Yeah, that’s not evil at all. Squeeky clean. 99 44/100 pure.
🙄🙄🙄
Smith is a very progressive private college. Progressive women are the biggest supporters of transwoman; therefore, Smith supports transwoman. Smith is getting what they voted for and support, Feds should allow them to drown in a sewer of their own making and focus on those colleges, especially public colleges, where not virtually all attendees are progressive,
allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces.
this whole topic is sooooo fn crazy that its making everything round it crazy
I mean we have supreme court justice and that whole ilk saying they cant tell you/define what a women is
and so then how can we base any laws on something we cant,,or they wont let us, define!!?!!!
cut the funding nowwww
let the already segregated remain that way
forced integration never ever works and lefty proves that to us over and over and we keep falling for the bait
roped in and continuing to fund them
I believe I read an article back in the Bdn/Democrat approved public library Drag Queen Story Hour craze that the young (ish) Democrat non-binary (too immature to decide) white womyn who was the head of the National Library Association, I think it was, was a Smith graduate. She was quoted as saying something to the effect that when a 18 0r 19 year old female comes to Smith, they teach her that she is many sexualities, but definitely NOT heterosexual – she just doesn’t know it yet but she/it will after the teaching staff at Smith get ahold of her/it. I’m surprised any young woman admitted to Smith dared to make any issue 0f Y chromosomes in the bathrooms or locker rooms or dorms. That’s good news if some of them did file complaints.
From my experience at a women’s college in the 90s – we had a number of girls from middle Asia whose parents picked the womens college specifically so they were not tempted by western ideals of dating (didn’t work, btw). I do not know how many would do so now, but that was my experience.
“Once admitted, biological males have full access to the school’s “all-gender” bathrooms and locker rooms.”
Somewhat badly stated, I suspect.
If the bathrooms and locker rooms are indeed “all-gender,” then it doesn’t matter who is pretending and who isn’t.