NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—The Trump administration’s investigation of Smith College is premised upon a fundamental misreading of Title IX law, argues Carrie Baker, a professor in the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program at Smith.
Smith College is a private, historically women’s college located in Northampton, Massachusetts; the college began admitting transfeminine students following a policy change in 2015, prior to which it had admitted only applicants whose educational records consistently reflected a female identity. Trump’s Department of Education (DOE) alleges that this policy change—including consequent admission of trans and nonbinary students into so-called “women’s only” spaces, such as restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories—may constitute a violation of Title IX law.
The DOE’s May 4 press release reads:
Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies—but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity. An all-girls college that enrolls [transgender] students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX.
The press release fails to make clear the nature of the alleged violation—likely because no violation actually occurred. Title IX does not include a single-sex exception, as Trump’s DOE claims. Title IX prohibits exclusionary discrimination on the basis of sex, but Trump’s DOE wages precisely the opposite complaint against Smith College: namely, that the school doesn’t discriminate on the basis of assigned sex in admissions. The allegation that Smith has thereby violated Title IX is patently incoherent.
What’s more is that, contrary to the language of the press release, there is no process by which private institutions of higher education “qualify” as single-sex under Title IX. Public institutions that have “traditionally and continually” admitted only a single sex from the time of their establishment are exempted from the anti-discrimination law in 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a)(5)—but the admissions practices of private institutions like Smith are never subject to it in the first place:
…In regard to admissions to educational institutions, this section shall apply only to institutions of vocational education, professional education, and graduate higher education, and to public institutions of undergraduate higher education.
In other words, Title IX does not determine the conditions under which any institution, whether public or private, may identify itself as a women’s college or a men’s college. It merely permits the existence of sex-discriminatory admissions, supposing that they belong either to private institutions or to public ones that were historically sex-discriminatory by the time of Title IX in 1974.
The press release continues:
When an institution holds itself out as being an all-women’s college, it is not just promising to deliver female-only dorms and bathrooms, and single-sex athletics; it is also committing to maintain a student body that makes possible a particular form of sorority and camaraderie.
But again, Trump’s DOE is either misunderstanding or intentionally misrepresenting what the law actually says. 34 CFR § 106.33 states that institutions that receive federal funding may provide sex-segregated facilities—not that they must. The same is true of athletics, as federally funded institutions are permitted, but not required, to maintain single-sex athletic programs. Smith College nevertheless announced that it would abide by the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) decision to bar transgender women from competing alongside cisgender women in sport in 2025, much to the dismay of Smith students, faculty, and staff.
In this case, too, an action purportedly taken to protect the interests of cisgender women appears to be at odds with what cisgender women themselves want. Indeed, cisgender Smith students were largely responsible for the policy change 11 years ago, which came on the heels of a pressure campaign devised by student group Queers and Allies (Q&A)—comprised, at the time, exclusively by students assigned female at birth.
Q&A took action in response to Smith’s denying admission to transgender applicant Calliope Wong, who was denied two times over: first for having male gender markers on her FAFSA and again for having male gender markers on her high school transcript. Wong had already been living openly as a transgender woman when she applied to Smith and had, in fact, taken the necessary steps to correct her transcript’s gender markers in advance of submitting her application; the remaining male gender markers were a result of a clerical error.
Unsurprisingly, the federal investigation into Smith was prompted not by a Smith student, but by an external complainant wholly unaffiliated with the college: a conservative nonprofit called Defending Education, which claims to “fight indoctrination in classrooms and on campus to promote the reestablishment of a quality, non-political education for all students.”
Smith students immediately showed their support for the school’s trans-inclusive policies following the DOE press release, chalking across the campus, “Trans Smithies belong,” and speaking publicly against the investigation.
“The Trump administration has launched attacks against immigrants, pro-Palestinian activists, and Black women leaders in unions and the government from its inception,” said Lisa Armstrong, also a professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. “The villainizing of trans women is part of a larger pattern of fear-mongering to shrink the public sphere and sow fear.”
Considering the plain unfeasibility of the DOE’s claim that Smith has violated Title IX in its admissions policy, it becomes difficult to see the federal investigation as anything more than a piece of political theatre. Smith makes a particularly attractive target to that end: it is a women’s liberal arts college located in the historically progressive city of Northampton, which declared itself a sanctuary city for transgender and gender-diverse people in 2024.
A source at Smith reports that the school’s President, Admissions Director, and in-house legal counsel have advised that there will be no changes to admissions, curriculum, or non-NCAA athletic programs in response to the investigation.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
