Federal investigation into Smith College probes whether transgender students can attend women’s schools – challenging the evolving mission of women’s education

Within the past decade, most women’s colleges in the United States – including Smith College, a liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts – have expanded their admissions policies, allowing transgender students to also attend. Many of these policies allow transgender women to apply, while policies for transgender men and nonbinary students vary more widely.

The Trump administration announced on May 4, 2026, that it is investigating Smith College for violatingTitle IX, a law that prohibits discrimination based on someone’s sex.

“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement issued by the Education Department.

As a scholar of higher education who studies the experiences of LGBTQ+ students, I think it is important to recognize that women’s colleges offer a unique experience to students, including transgender and queer students. They create environments where students who are marginalized by their genders see themselves as leaders.

Women’s colleges have also long been welcoming places for lesbian and queer relationships, offering community and support as attitudes about gender and sexuality have changed.

A prior focus on trans athletes

Up until now, the Trump administration’s policy agenda on transgender rights and education has primarily focused on whether universities should let transgender students participate in college sports.

The Trump administration froze US$175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 because it objected to how the school allowed transgender students to participate on women’s sports teams. One trans woman athlete named Lia Thomas, in particular, gained recognition for her strong performance on the women’s swim team at Penn.

The administration released the frozen funding after Penn agreed in July 2025 to block trans athletes like Thomas from participating in women’s sports.

Some of the sports-related lawsuits the administration filed in 2025 – like those targeting Penn and the University of Maine for allowing trans women to participate in women’s sports – have been settled out of court.

Other Title IX investigations into San José State University and the University of Nevada-Reno, for example, are still ongoing.

Understanding role of women’s colleges

Women’s colleges were created in the mid-to-late 1800s, when women were largely not allowed to enroll in most colleges. Women’s colleges became places where these students would be taken seriously as women and leaders.

As more colleges went coeducational, women’s colleges had to explain their purpose and evolving missions over time.

After World War II, for example, people said that American women who were working jobs outside the home should stop. Women’s colleges again explained their mission to the public, stating they could prepare women for the workforce and home. So, while women’s colleges were created to respond to the gendered exclusion of women, their missions have shifted as societal understandings of gender have evolved, too.

Transgender students didn’t suddenly appear at women’s colleges or other higher education institutions. But in the early 2000s, more students began to openly identify as transgender, and colleges increasingly had to decide how to adjust their policies.

Some older alumni of women’s colleges have expressed concern about admitting trans students, including whether allowing them affects a women’s college’s reputation, traditions or identity. These debates can matter a lot because most women’s colleges in the U.S. are private liberal arts colleges that depend on tuition payments and donations.

But some alumni have supported more expansive admissions policies consistent with the broader mission of women’s education.

While women’s schools have presented their own challenges for some queer and transgender students, they have long remained significant to the LGBTQ+ community.

What should women’s colleges be?

The number of women’s colleges has declined sharply over the past few decades.

In 1960 there were about 230 such colleges. In 2023 there were 30 women’s colleges in the United States. As more colleges became coeducational, women had more options, and many women’s colleges either closed, merged or began admitting men.

This decline in women’s colleges helps explain why debates over admitting trans students to women’s colleges are so charged. Each decision becomes part of a broader question about what women’s colleges are and should be.

The conversation around transgender and nonbinary students attending women’s colleges became more public in the 2010s. In 2013 Smith College denied admission to a trans woman because the student indicated that she was male on her federal financial aid forms.

This resulted in a big debate between Smith alumni and students about what the school’s admission policy should be. Leading up to this point, several women’s colleges – including Barnard, Smith, Mills and Wellesley – treated trans student applicants on a case-by-case basis, or in an informal way.

In 2014, Mount Holyoke, a women’s college in western Massachusetts, created one of the most expansive early policies on this issue. It allowed applications from transgender women and from some applicants who identified as transgender more broadly, while continuing to exclude cisgender men.

Smith also announced a new policy in 2015 that allowed anyone who identified as female to apply and be admitted.

Today, most but not all women’s colleges have their own policies regarding the admission of trans students. These policies vary: Some admit transgender women and some nonbinary applicants, while others are more restrictive. Many do not admit applicants who identify as men, including transgender men.

Mixed experiences for trans students

Some research finds that students overall at women’s colleges report higher levels of support – including from faculty – than students at coeducational colleges. Some transgender students arrive expecting these colleges to offer a safe and accepting atmosphere.

But some transgender students have negative experiences at women’s colleges and can feel like they are being watched too closely, ignored or both. These problems aren’t just because of interactions with other people. They can also occur when trans students encounter student records, bathrooms, housing and campus rules that assume everyone is either a man or a woman, or identifies with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Transgender students often report that college can feel less welcoming to them. Research on trans college students shows that academic, cocurricular, peer and institutional contexts shape how welcoming or alienating campus feels.

My research with other colleagues also examines how trans and queer students thrive in college, whether at co-ed or women’s colleges. Many form close-knit communities and are vital members of their campuses. The difficulties trans students face are not inherent to being trans. I believe they are produced by policies and systems that marginalize them because they are trans.

Barring transgender people from attending women’s colleges would block a higher education pathway for transgender and queer students.

Women’s colleges were created in response to gender inequality. I believe this history should push them to keep making college more open and supportive for students excluded because of gender.

Alex C. Lange receives funding from the Spencer Foundation.