Defending Education has been a stalwart champion for restoring sanity in our education system and protecting the rights and civil liberties of students, especially those who are overlooked or outright targeted by Leftist policies.
In the last month, they've filed a complaint against Minneapolis Public Schools and its discriminatory, race-based curriculum, and they recently won big in New York, where a court struck down an "anti-racist" lawsuit against the city that would've done away with merit-based admissions in the city's schools.
Now they're back and have filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University over the institution's alleged Title IX violations.
On November 3, 2025, Defending Education filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University, a university older than the United States itself, for violations against Title IX, which guarantees female student’s right to sex-segregated intimate spaces.
Among other violations of Title IX and various Executive Orders, Princeton University offers 250 gender-inclusive restrooms, boasts all-gender dorms, and prescribes hormone replacement therapy to students. Astonishingly, Princeton also offers two distinct graduation ceremonies: 1) a “Rose Graduation” ceremony, “celebrating women and fem accomplishments and achievements,” and 2) a “Lavender Graduation” ceremony “celebrating queer and trans accomplishments and achievements.” And while Princeton admits that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, its Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity instead equates sex discrimination with “[s]ex or gender discrimination.”
The Princeton University website has a page devoted to "Trans at Princeton Resources," which includes some of the following: name change resources, "gender-affirming care" resources including hormone replacement therapy, and shows the University is very proud of its "trans inclusive" policies:
[s]ince the early 2000s, members of the Princeton University administration have been working to improve services and support for transgender students as well as streamline processes to make the experience easier for those who want to access any kinds of medical transition. Princeton is considered a leader among colleges and universities for our support for transgender students and was featured in the Advocate as a Top 10 Trans-Friendly University
That page also includes a link to its "nondiscrimination policy" that reads in part, "Princeton University strives to be an intellectual and residential community in which all members can participate fully and equally, in an atmosphere free from all manifestations of bias and from all forms of discrimination, harassment, exploitation, or intimidation."
Of course, the "Rose Graduation" and "Lavender Graduation" ceremonies violate that policy of discrimination.
Defending Education also notes that Princeton forces women to share the campus' 250 restrooms and dorm rooms with trans individuals under the guise of "gender neutral" bathroom and housing policies. The restrooms, according to Defending Ed, have gaps in the stalls that do not protect women's privacy.
In the complaint, Defending Ed explains the impact of these policies on female students:
Princeton offers limited exemptions from the communal bathrooms, but only for medical or safety reasons, and it cannot accommodate all requests. Moreover, while Princeton offers these medical and safety exceptions, it refuses to grant religious exemptions. This discriminates against many female religious Princeton students, such as hijabi students, whose faith regulates interactions with male students in private spaces.
Understandably, many female students have protested these bathroom policies. As one student put it in The Daily Princetonian, "knowing that there are male students in a place that I've always considered a safe haven scares me. Another student article emphasized that "having the option to be surrounded by' only female students 'would be really nice and less stressful." A third female student concluded: "[N]o student should have to share a bathroom with the opposite [sex] if they do not feel comfortable doing so." Yet Princeton forces female students to do exactly that.
In a statement issued to Townhall, Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Legal Fellow at Defending Education, said, "Princeton University, one of the nation’s oldest universities, has a long and prestigious history. But of late, it has confused sex with gender identity, proudly boasting of its efforts to be one of the most 'transgender friendly' institutions in the nation."
Perry continued, "But Princeton’s bathroom, housing, graduation, and medical policies flout federal law, and federal directive, and violate the rights of Princeton’s female students to equal education on the storied campus."