Case Dismissed: Prof. Amy Wax Loses Discrimination Lawsuit Against Penn

Case Dismissed: Prof. Amy Wax Loses Discrimination Lawsuit Against Penn

When we last checked in on Professor Amy Wax, her discrimination lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania was, sadly, already looking like a lost cause. The judge’s mind was obviously made up in June when he denied her early bid to block the school’s sanctions against her for expressing her conservative views, rejecting her argument that Penn had violated her First Amendment rights.

So it came as no surprise yesterday when the court dismissed Wax’s entire complaint against the University.

“As much as Wax would like otherwise, this case is not a First Amendment case,” Federal District Court Judge Timothy Savage wrote, restating his earlier conclusions. “It is a discrimination case brought under federal antidiscrimination laws. It calls for us to determine whether offensive comments directed at racial minorities are protected by those laws.”

“The anti-discrimination statutes protect speakers, not speech,” he stated.

We’ve covered Wax’s story in numerous posts, including here, here, and here.

Earlier this year, Wax sued Penn in the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania after it refused to lift the sanctions imposed on her last fall, following more than two years of disciplinary proceedings against the award-winning, tenured law professor.

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.

Wax’s long-running battle with the University began in 2017, after she triggered the woke campus mob by unapologetically expressing traditional American values in an op-ed. As soon as the attacks against her started, she doubled down, persistently and publicly commenting on hot-button topics such as the negative consequences of affirmative action—observing that Black students “rarely” finish “in the top half” of their law school classes—and immigration restrictions. Her remarks escalated student protests and a petition for her removal.

Her comments that America would be better off “with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration”—because Asian immigrants support the Democrat party responsible for ruining the country—prompted swift condemnation from the dean, and finally gave him the pretext to begin proceedings to terminate her.

Those proceedings began in 2022 and dragged on relentlessly—even as Wax battled cancer—culminating in the school’s decision last September to sanction her “for a major infraction of the university’s behavioral standards.”

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.”

However, in her lawsuit, Wax’s lawyers alleged it was Penn that discriminated based on race and violated core principles of the First Amendment. By tolerating antisemitic speech while punishing Wax’s protected speech, the University violated federal law against racial discrimination, the filing stated, invoking the protections of Title VI, Title VII, and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act.

White, Jewish faculty are far more likely to be disciplined for offending speech than racial minorities at Penn, Wax’s lawyers alleged.

The lawsuit also claimed Penn breached its contract with Wax, guaranteeing her academic freedom under the terms of her tenure.

In March, the University asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that while federal civil rights laws prohibit treating individuals differently based on their race, they do not prohibit treating individuals differently based on what they say about race.

Yesterday, the court agreed.

“Wax failed to allege facts showing her race was a factor in the disciplinary process, and there is no cause of action under federal antidiscrimination statutes based on the content of her speech,” Judge Savage wrote:

Upon a closer look, her claim that Penn discriminated against her based on her race is based on the same argument she made about the content of her speech. She expressly claims that Penn treats the content of antisemitic speech differently than her speech. Again, she focuses on the content of speech, not the speaker. She defines Penn’s speech policy as allowing some races to be criticized and others not. That clearly goes to speech content.

The anti-discrimination statutes, however, “forbid discrimination based on the race of the speakers, not the racial content of their speech,” he concluded.

The court dismissed Wax’s discrimination claims with prejudice, effectively ending the case.

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