WASHINGTON – The US education department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Smith College, the women’s school in Northampton, Massachusetts, 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 focused on policies that allowed 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, housing and locker rooms – violates civil rights protections for women.
Ms 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.”
The investigation raises the possibility that the administration could target additional women’s colleges, which in recent years have largely opened their doors to applicants who identify as women or nonbinary.
Ms Lynn Pasquerella, a former president of Mount Holyoke College who helped rewrite its admissions policies a decade ago to welcome transgender students, said the education department’s investigation might have a chilling effect on those applications.
She pointed to executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in 2025 that barred school programmes focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Rather than battle the administration, many schools shuttered campus offices or created new rules on how to talk about gender and race in the classroom, and she said she feared a similar result from the admissions investigation.
“This is an issue that affects a small number of individuals very deeply,” Ms Pasquerella said. “But it will create uncertainty for transgender students and discourage them from applying, and that will be the real loss.”
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. NYTIMES
