Prof. Amy Wax Sues UPenn Over Race-Based Discriminatory Speech Policy
Lawsuit: White, Jewish faculty far more likely to be disciplined for offending speech than racial minorities.

Embattled law professor Amy Wax has just made good on her threat to sue the University of Pennsylvania after it refused to lift sanctions imposed on her last fall for expressing her conservative views.
As we reported earlier, the school said Wax’s “discriminatory and disrespectful statements to specific targeted racial, national, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender groups with which our students and colleagues identify” created “an unequal learning environment.” Her punishment included suspension for one year at half pay, loss of her named chair, and public reprimand—though she was not fired and did not lose tenure.
But in her lawsuit, Wax’s lawyers allege it was UPenn that discriminated based on race. By tolerating antisemitic speech while punishing Wax’s protected speech, the University violated federal law against racial discrimination, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Philadelphia yesterday.
The lawsuit also alleges UPenn breached its contract with Wax, which guarantees her academic freedom under the terms of her tenure.
We’ve followed the events leading up to Wax’s lawsuit against UPenn here:
- Embattled Law Prof. Amy Wax to UPenn: Lift Sanctions or I’ll See You in Court
- Report: UPenn To Sanction Dissident Law Professor Amy Wax
- Report: Embattled UPenn Law Prof. Amy Wax Appealing Hearing Board Sanctions Quietly Recommended Over The Summer
- House Committee Demands U Penn Antisemitism Records, Decries Hypocritical Mistreatment Of Prof. Amy Wax
- Embattled UPenn Law Prof Amy Wax Sets the Record Straight: “mainstream media coverage has been agenda-driven”
- It “Sucks” That Prof. Amy Wax Still Employed, U Penn Law Dean Declared On Recently Released 2019 Audio
- Tables Turned: Prof. Amy Wax, Charged With Wrongthink, Files Counter-Grievance Against U Penn Law Dean
- U Penn Law Prof. Amy Wax Seeks Dismissal Of University Disciplinary Proceedings: “Premature, Unwarranted, and Prejudicial”
- How A Weak Penn Law Dean Weaponized Student Hurt Feelings Against Dissident Prof. Amy Wax
Readers following Wax’s story from the beginning will recall how she triggered the woke campus mob when she observed that Black students “rarely” finish “in the top half” of their law school classes. UPenn sought to discipline her over that statement, the lawsuit says, not because it wasn’t true, but because it was “harmful.”
But the true reason for disciplining Wax, her lawyers allege, is that at UPenn, “some races may not be criticized while other racial or ethnic groups can be—and routinely are—subjected to virulently racist speech without consequence.”
Why, for example, didn’t Penn start disciplinary proceedings against Dwayne Booth, an undergraduate lecturer, for his modern-day blood libel cartoon against Jews? Though the school did criticize the drawing, Booth faced no further consequences.
The lawsuit lays out the school’s double standard in this table showing how UPenn pardons in one case and punishes in another:
“There is no rational way to conclude that Professor Wax’s statements would cause more ‘harm’ than Mr. Booth’s blood-libel cartoon,” the lawsuit concludes. “Yet the University has sought only to discipline Professor Wax, while hiding behind disingenuous paeans to free speech and a supposed commitment to academic free expression to justify its decision not to lift a finger against Mr. Booth.”
UPenn’s speech policy discriminates based not only on the content of speech but also on the racial identity of the speaker, the lawsuit continues. “White speakers are far more likely to be disciplined for “harmful” speech while minority speakers are rarely, if ever, subject to disciplinary procedures for the same.”
The complaint alleges UPenn’s disciplinary proceedings also violated her due process rights under the terms of her tenure. And they violated the school’s own procedures, by mischaracterizing Wax’s speech as “conduct”—analogous to major felonies such as rape—in an attempt to justify jacking up the charges to impose “major sanctions” for what was in fact academic speech.
“Penn has never used the ‘major infractions’ procedures for any other speech,” the lawsuit says. “Indeed, it has not even invoked the minor infractions disciplinary procedures for any of the anti-Semitic speech or incitements to violence described in this Complaint.”
The proceedings against Wax were initiated in 2022 by then-Dean Ted Ruger, who betrayed his own bias earlier in 2019 when he told students at a town hall meeting, “Her presence here…makes me angry, it makes me pissed off,” adding that it “sucks” that she was still there. And when students talked about wanting to fire her, he said “the only way to get rid of a tenured professor is this process …that’s gonna take months.”
Penn’s racial double standards have also created a hostile environment for Jewish students and professors, the lawsuit says. Last year, the House committee investigating campus antisemitism agreed. It decried UPenn’s hypocritical treatment of Wax as showing a “clear double standard by tolerating antisemitic vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but suppressing and penalizing other expression it deemed problematic.”
During his campaign, Donald Trump promised that universities would lose federal funding if they did not end “antisemitic propaganda” once he was elected. Wax’s lawyers told the Free Beacon that in the new administration, “the school’s ‘racist double standards’ justify a wholesale revocation of federal funding.”
And now, what began as a dispute over UPenn’s disciplinary proceedings against Prof. Wax has become a federal case that could set a precedent for other schools—and end that double standard once and for all.

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Comments
Bravo! Another case where it takes a smart, feisty gal to act like a real man!
They must be really disappointed that she didn’t cave and go quietly into the night like a good little conservative.
Men act like that all the time, just not politicians.
Glenn Loury, when he was a leftist, gave a talk deploring the high incarceration rates of blacks. Amy Wax raised her hand and said that she thought that there ought to be more blacks in jail.
Meaning that she wanted to argue it. Loury turned her in. Nowadays they’re sympathetic friends.
Professor Wax is a round peg in a box of square holes. Or another way of saying it, a truth-teller in a den of liars. Truth in most major universities is no longer important only ideology.
The truth should be the ultimate standard.
Dr. Wax, and a constitution enforcing DOJ will make UPENN rue the day they practiced typical academic double standards against her.
Popcorn, please!!
I hope she bankrupts UPenn!
UPenn is a private institution, but because it takes federal money it must abide by federal laws. One way the soon to be Trump Administration can get UPenn to do that is to threaten that it will withhold all federal monies, including student loans, until UPenn complys with federal laws.
That’s easily replaceable pocket change for many Qatari Kuwaiti Saudi
I’m really not sure what UPenn is doing here. They have no chance of winning this as even those of us on the outside looking in saw what was going on at UPenn. In other news, I’d be really curious to find out the exact funding source of Biden’s Center housed at the school and who the visitors were since he had several crates of classified material stored there.
The better course is to allow free, open, unimpeded exchange of ideas instead of folks complaining that the ‘mean words’ hurt their feelings and demanding someone make the ‘bad man’ stop. Especially so in an academic setting which was designed for the very purpose.
That was the promise for all who attended college: exposure to different ideas and beliefs. Progressives have ended that and now offer indoctrination and propaganda instead. As any good sleuth knows, you have to go back to the beginning to solve the crime. K-12 and beyond have destroyed the love and respect for our country, and from then on, the erosion of patriotism has followed.
AS is so often the case, the aberrant behavior isn’t the problem. It’s the person who points out the abberant behavior,
Whoever crafted the complaint needs to be complimented! Good wordsmithing!