The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday afternoon that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has opened an investigation into Smith College’s admission policy for “admitting men.” The investigation aims to determine whether or not the college’s admittance of biological males violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
The press release specifies that the OCR will look at ways the college has granted people assigned male at birth “access to women-only spaces, including dormitories, bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams.”
Smith’s current admission policy, which has been in place for over a decade, limits admission to “people who identify as women — cis, trans and nonbinary women.” The policy was updated in 2015 to specifically include self-identified transgender women. Applicants must check a box affirming that they “understand Smith’s admission policy regarding gender identity and identify as a female” on the Common Application, which the Office of Admission uses to review incoming applications.
Representatives of the college told The Sophian on Monday that they received official notice of the investigation. “The College is fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws,” they said, adding that the college does not comment on pending government investigations.
The federal investigation comes on the heels of a complaint filed in June, 2025, by Defending Education, a registered non-profit activist organization that claims to target indoctrination in classrooms. The organization accused Smith of discrimination on the basis of sex, arguing that the college “gives spots to ‘self-identified’ transgender women that would have otherwise gone to biological women.”
“The mission of Smith College is to educate women of promise for lives of distinction. In the years since Smith’s founding, concepts of female identity have evolved,” then-college president Kathleen McCartney wrote in an official statement detailing the admission policy change in 2015. “Smith alumnae have been leaders in the movement to afford women greater freedoms of aspiration and self-expression. At the same time, educational settings in which women are central remain powerfully transformative.”
The statement also stipulated that, keeping with their “tradition and identity as a college of and for women,” gendered language including female pronouns would continue to be used in institutional correspondence.
“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” said Kimberly Richey, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, in the Department of Education’s Monday press release. “Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness and compliance under federal law. The Trump Administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense.”
In accordance with updated federal policy, Smith affirmed last spring that it would abide by the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) policy regarding transgender student-athlete participation, limiting competition in women’s varsity sports to athletes assigned female at birth only.
At the time of the announcement, Carolyn McDaniel, director of the college’s media relations office, told The Sophian, “Although Smith does not agree with excluding trans athletes from varsity competition, we believe it is in the best interest of all our athletes to remain in the NCAA so that we can continue to advocate for their rights as a member organization.”
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