Top Women’s College Admitted Gender-Confused Men. Now The Feds Are Involved.

The Trump administration opened an investigation on Monday into a historic all-women’s college that admits gender-confused men.

The Department of Education confirmed in a letter that it had launched a probe into whether Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was violating Title IX. The investigation comes almost one year after watchdog organization Defending Education filed a civil rights complaint over its transgender policies. 

“The complaint alleges that the College, one of the largest women’s colleges in the United States, 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,” the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights wrote in a letter on Monday to Defending Education. “[The Office of Civil Rights] is opening the complaint for investigation.”

The office will determine whether there are any merits to Defending Education’s complaint, which was first reported on by The Daily Wire in June 2025. 

The complaint said that the school violates federal policy by allowing males who identify as females to take the place of females in admissions. Smith College only admitted about 22% of applicants for the 2024-2025 school year. 

The stated policies make it clear that the historically all-women’s college allows men to enter so long as they identify as transgender. The decision to admit males was first made in 2015 after Smith conducted a year-long study group on the topic. 

“People who identify as women — cis, trans, and nonbinary women — are eligible to apply to Smith,” the college explains. “Smith’s policy is one of self-identification. The applicant’s affirmation of identity is sufficient.”

Smith also says that it has an “all-gender locker room in the athletic facilities” and is working on making more multi-stall “all-gender” bathrooms. 

Defending Education Vice President Sarah Parshall Perry said she looked forward to the department’s investigation. 

“Smith College has a longstanding reputation as a women’s college of exclusive excellence. But that hasn’t prevented it from falling victim to the fiction of ‘transgender’ womanhood,” she said. “Admitting men who feel like women means that the institution — formerly one of the nation’s prestigious ‘Seven Sisters’ all-women’s colleges — is no longer for women only.”