One of the largest all-women’s colleges in the U.S., Smith College, has been hit with a federal civil rights complaint because it admits men claiming to be women and allows them in the private women’s spaces like restrooms.
The Title IX complaint, filed by Defending Education with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, brought the complaint against the 150-year-old Massachusetts women’s college “for discrimination on the basis of sex in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance in violation of” federal law.
The college’s Equal Education Opportunity Policy “indicates that it will follow Title IX and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in its federally funded programs,” the complaint, written by Defending Education Vice President Sarah Parshall Perry, states. However, she continues, “The very same policy … indicates that Smith interprets Title IX to prohibit ‘gender identity’ discrimination, despite federal case law and this [Education] Department’s guidance to the contrary.”
“Discrimination based on gender identity is not the same as discrimination based on sex under Title IX, as this Department well knows, and the Supreme Court has never held it is,” the complaint reads. “In other words, to the extent Smith’s accommodations for so-called gender identity encroach upon sex-specific programs and spaces, it is in violation of Title IX. The college’s admission policy appears to violate Title IX for the same reason.”
The complaint further cites executive orders signed by President Donald Trump and guidance from the Education Department that Title IX protections shall be based on sex rather than “gender identity.” The college confirms it allows males who claim to be female to take admissions spots from actual women, the complaint says. Smith’s website explicitly states that “people who identify as women—cis, trans and nonbinary women—are eligible to apply to Smith.” It also says that male applicants can simply claim to be women to be considered for admission because “Smith’s policy is one of self-identification. The applicant’s affirmation of identity is sufficient.”
“Ironically, in what appears to be yet another exercise in sex discrimination, Smith admits natal men who identify as women but does not admit natal women who identify as men,” the complaint states, citing a 2023 CNN article.
The complaint goes on to cite “Smith’s policies on ‘Gender Identity and Expression,’” which “indicate that ‘[e]very single-occupancy restroom on campus is designated all-gender” and show how the college “advertises ‘[a]n all-gender locker room in the athletic facilities,’” the complaint reads. Smith College’s website also says that “more and more” multi-stall bathrooms on campus will be designated “all-gender,” allowing men to access them, and that the health & wellness center “provides trans-affirming primary care, including hormone therapy.”
The school made the change to allow men in 2015, when it told itself, faculty, staff, parents, and alumnae that allowing men in the school actually “affirms Smith’s unwavering mission and identity as a women’s college, our commitment to representing the diversity of women’s lived experiences, and the college’s exceptional role in the advancement of women worldwide.”
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