Smith College, one of the nation's best-known women's colleges, is facing a federal civil rights investigation over its policy allowing transgender women to enroll, opening a new front in the Trump administration's broader effort to redefine Title IX protections around biological sex.
The U.S. Department of Education said its Office for Civil Rights opened the investigation into the private liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts. The department said the probe will examine whether Smith violated Title IX, the 1972 federal law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, by admitting transgender women and allowing them access to women-only spaces.
