Princeton hit with Title IX complaint over gender-neutral communal bathrooms

An education watchdog group recently filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against Princeton University over the school’s gender-neutral communal bathrooms. 

A spokesperson for Defending Education told The College Fix the group hopes its complaint will set a precedent for all higher education institutions. 

The school is engaging in “discrimination based on sex in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments,” Defending Education Vice President Sarah Perry stated in her letter to the Office for Civil Rights. 

“Princeton has prioritized some students’ subjective feelings over all female Princeton students’ rights to sex-segregated intimate spaces,” Perry wrote.

The complaint highlights two of seven university residence colleges, Yeh College and New College West, which only offer gender-neutral communal bathrooms. Students are randomly assigned to residence halls in their first year and cannot opt out of communal bathrooms. 

Exemptions for communal bathrooms are granted for medical and safety reasons, and are limited in number. 

The education advocacy group claimed that the gender-neutral bathrooms violate Title IX, as well as President Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order, which requires federally funded programs to recognize the biological distinction between binary sexes, male and female, for the enforcement of civil rights law. 

The complaint was filed after several parents brought their concerns to the university and to Defending Education.

One exhibit in the complaint describes a parent who contacted the university but was discouraged by its lack of action to address concerns about her daughter’s safety and well-being.

The College Fix reached out to Princeton University’s media relations office and Michele Minter, the vice provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity & Title IX Coordinator, for comments on this case. Neither responded. 

However, Defending Education Senior Director Paul Runko told The College Fix that Princeton has not publicly responded to the complaint. 

He added that the group hopes the complaint will influence other institutions to update their policies.

“We hope all universities, including Princeton, will follow federal civil rights law that guarantees women are not discriminated against on the basis of sex. This includes their right to sex-separated facilities,” he said. 

“Women on any campus in America deserve safety and equality, which is why we filed the complaint. Not only is this policy unlawful, but changing the policy is just the moral thing to do,” Runko told The Fix. 

Looking forward, Runko is hopeful that the reopening of the federal government will prompt action.

“Now that the federal government is fully open and back to business, we are hopeful that the Office for Civil Rights will promptly review and open an investigation into Princeton’s policies that we outlined in the complaint,” he said. 

A legal expert agrees that the complaint has firm grounding in current federal law.

Rachel Morrison, director of the Administrative State Accountability Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said universities accepting federal education funds “are required to comply with Title IX and its sex-based protections for females.”

“If universities don’t comply with their obligations under Title IX, they open themselves up to complaints and enforcement actions by the Department of Education,” Morrison said.

Under the Trump administration, the department “has not shied away from investigating alleged violations of federal civil rights laws and vigorously enforcing compliance with those laws, including sex-specific spaces and opportunities for female students,” she said.

The complaint comes after a series of changes under the Trump Administration that have notably impacted higher education. These changes include the updated Title IX Rule, which removes protections for “gender identity.”

Following Trump’s executive order titled “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” several universities have reevaluated their policies as they pertain to housing, campus buildings, and athletics.

For instance, Michigan State University recently reversed part of its decision to make all community bathrooms in one of its dorms gender-neutral, The College Fix previously reported. 

MORE: Washington State U. halts courses on risks, ethics of gender medicine after activist pressure