Department of Education threatens to pull Smith College's funding for admitting trans women

The Department of Education announced Monday it has opened a Title IX investigation into Smith College over the school’s transgender-inclusive acceptance policy.

Per the announcement, the department’s Office of Civil Rights will now evaluate whether or not the college has violated the 1972 protections by “allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces” — rhetoric that is frequently used as a conservative dogwhistle against transgender women and girls.

The investigation marks both a continuation and an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict and regulate trans people in higher education. In February of last year, the Trump administration moved to block trans women and girls from sports through an executive order that mandated federal funding be revoked from educational programs with trans-inclusive athletic policies. This followed the president’s January 2025 executive order, which strictly defined gender through the lens of assigned sex at birth and stated that trans-inclusive interpretations of Title IX protections “harmed women.”

In response to the investigation, Smith College told CNN that the institution “is fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.” Them has independently reached out to Smith for comment and will update if we hear back.

First chartered in 1871, Smith has a rich and complicated history with the generations of gender nonconforming and trans students who have roamed through its storied halls. In 2013, on-campus organizers pushed the university to officially admit trans women after an applicant was rejected because the assigned sex on her financial aid forms did not match her gender on her application. A 2015 policy codified the liberal arts college’s acceptance of trans women — a rule most historically women’s colleges now abide by, including nearby institutions such as Mount Holyoke and Wellesley College.

Currently, the official college admissions page states that all students who self-identify as women can apply, including “cis, trans, and nonbinary women.”

Now, in another effort to force institutions of higher education to capitulate to the Trump administration’s anti-trans stances, the Department of Education is coming after the Northampton, Massachusetts-based college.

According to Monday’s statement, the Department of Education will be looking into the school “for admitting biological men.” The DOE claims that Smith College is in possible violation of Title IX policies, which currently allow institutions of higher education to have gender-based admissions policies such as all-women’s or all-men’s colleges. In 2025, the administration sent a document called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to nine universities, detailing that the gender protections outlined in Title IX policies would be interpreted through the lens of “reproductive function and biological processes.”

Based on its language, that document has been widely interpreted as a threat to federal funding if schools do not comply — a highly favored tactic in Trump’s playbook to force the hands of colleges and universities. Indeed, the DOE’s Monday statement claims that if Smith is found in violation of Title IX, it could lose its status as a single-sex institution, which would force it to either admit all students or lose access to federal funds.

This story was originally published on Them.