RALEIGH — The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened a Title IX investigation into Western Carolina University.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began the investigation into Western Carolina University “amid allegations that WCU has openly refused to comply with Title IX and to ensure sex-separated intimate spaces in federally funded institutions of higher education.”
“WCU’s reported contempt for federal antidiscrimination laws and indifference to, and retaliation against, girls who have spoken up about males invading their intimate spaces is simply unacceptable,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a press release.
”After fighting for years to secure Title IX protections, women must again fight hostile institutions to ensure their right to equal protection and opportunity in sports, living spaces, and intimate facilities is respected, “Trainor said. “The Trump-McMahon Department of Education will continue to deploy every lawful means to eradicate this wholly unnecessary and egregious violation of women and girls’ civil rights.”
OCR’s press release also cites “credible reports” that the school allowed a male to room with a female in a girls’ dormitory. Those reports include public records from WCU obtained by Speech First regarding a Title IX investigation by WCU into former student Payton McNabb. The records were shared and reported on by the right-leaning outlet National Review.
“Western Carolina University has perpetrated a policy that is not in full compliance with Title IX. The violation has impacted not only me but many other female students at the university that deserve our rights to single-sex spaces,” McNabb said in the OCR press statement.
McNabb is an Independent Women’s Forum ambassador and was a special guest of President Donald Trump during his address given to a joint session of Congress earlier this year.
“In addition to my experience discovering a male in the women’s restroom on campus, men who self-identify as transgender are entering other women’s intimate spaces like restrooms, dorm rooms and locker rooms,” said McNabb. “Female college students will not sit idly by as men take over our spaces. I’m thankful to have an administration that will stand up for us.”
McNabb was knocked unconscious and suffered a brain injury during a high school volleyball match after a transgender opponent spiked the ball into her head. Following her injury, McNabb and All-American swimmer Riley Gaines testified in front of the North Carolina House Judiciary Committee about their experiences with men in women’s spaces. The pair spoke in support of the 2023 Fairness in Women’s Sports Act (House Bill 574), which bars males from female sports.
WCU’s Title IX investigation against McNabb was opened after she encountered a male student in a women’s locker room and asked that male student to leave. The records obtained by Speech First show WCU’s chief compliance officer was resistant to Trump’s January executive order that removed gender ideology and defined sex based on biology, as well as limiting the use of spaces like bathrooms based on those definitions.
Trump’s order followed the final legal end to former President Joe Biden’s alteration of Title IX, which rewrote the definition of sex to include gender ideology, paving the way for men to enter into women’s sports and shared spaces like locker rooms. The Biden administration quietly withdrew the Title IX changes in late December 2024, citing mounting legal challenges.
