Trump Administration Investigating Smith College Over Transgender Admissions

The Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Smith College, the women’s school in Northampton, Mass., violated anti-discrimination laws by allowing transgender students to enroll.

The inquiry broadens the Trump administration’s bid to limit rights for the nation’s transgender students by targeting school admissions for the first time. Until now, the administration had mostly targeted policies that allowed for transgender women to participate in women’s sports and use women’s bathrooms.

By investigating Smith, the administration is raising the question of whether allowing transgender women to enroll at a women’s college — and providing access to “women-only” spaces such as bathrooms, dormitories and locker rooms — violates civil rights protections for women.

Kimberly Richey, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said in a statement that “an all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males.”

“Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness and compliance under federal law,” Ms. Richey said. “The Trump administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense.”

The college issued a statement acknowledging the investigation and stating that it remained “fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”

About 4.7 percent of college students identify as transgender, according to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, a group of doctors and scientists that has called for more government regulation of pediatric gender medicine.

The federal investigation was in response to a civil-rights complaint filed by Defending Education, a nonprofit group founded in 2021 that has become one of the leading voices in the growing parents’ rights movement. Several of the group’s complaints have sparked federal civil rights investigations during the past year, and its research is often cited during congressional hearings by conservative lawmakers.

Formerly known as Parents Defending Education, the Arlington, Va.-based group posted on its website a letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights on Monday announcing the investigation into Smith.

Smith, one of the nation’s largest women’s schools with about 2,500 students, has been admitting transgender students since 2015, along with several other top women’s colleges. The issue became a lightning rod at women’s colleges after a transgender applicant was denied acceptance to Smith in 2013 because her gender identity did not match her financial aid forms.

Since then, most women’s colleges updated their admissions policies to welcome transgender applicants. One notable exception has been Sweet Briar College in central Virginia, which does not admit transgender students and helps students in transition transfer to another college.

The Trump administration resolved 30 percent fewer civil rights complaints in the nation’s schools in 2025 compared with the Biden administration in 2024, the sharpest year-over-year decline in at least three decades. But the new administration has opened more than 40 civil rights investigations into schools and other educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students.

The Education Department has taken the unusual step of backing out of civil rights agreements that previous administrations negotiated to protect transgender students. The government has also sued state education departments and high school athletic associations in California and Minnesota over policies that permit transgender athletes to participate in school sports.