BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- A federal judge dismissed Professor Amy Wax's lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania, ruling her claims of racial discrimination were 'implausible.'
- Wax's lawsuit alleges the university applied double standards in punishing white speakers compared to minority speakers.
- The university and Wax have conflicted for years over her controversial views on race and academic performance, resulting in her suspension for the 2025-26 school year with reduced salary.
- Wax has made statements suggesting that factors other than racism, such as family breakdown and crime, are more significant in hindering black Americans.
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by embattled University of Pennsylvania Professor Amy Wax on Thursday that accused the university of double standards and racial discrimination.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage ruled that her racial discrimination claims were “implausible,” Reuters reports. Wax, who is Jewish, teaches law at the Ivy League university.
“There are no factual allegations in her complaint showing that her race was part of her disciplinary hearing or appeal, or that it had anything to do with bringing the charges against her,” Savage wrote.
“As much as Wax would like otherwise, this case is not a First Amendment case. It is a discrimination case brought under federal antidiscrimination laws,” the judge wrote. “It calls for us to determine whether offensive comments directed at racial minorities are protected by those laws.”
The lawsuit, filed in January, centers around a years-long dispute between Wax and the university regarding its decision to suspend her for controversial comments on race, IQ, and immigration.
In it, she alleges that “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 University’s Speech Policy thus discriminates on the basis of race and other protected grounds—both in terms of the identity of speakers and the subject of speech,” her case alleges.
But Judge Savage disagreed, writing that none of the examples mentioned in Wax’s lawsuit “had a pattern of making denigrating and derogatory statements about minorities,” The Daily Pennsylvanian reports.
In January, her lead counsel, Attorney Jason Torchinsky, told the Free Beacon the university should lose its federal funding due to its “racist double standards.”
“Given Penn’s multiple egregious violations of federal anti-discrimination law, including those detailed in our complaint, there is ample justification for cutting off Penn’s federal funding across the board,” Torchinsky said.
According to the student newspaper, the lawsuit also accuses the university of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by “failing to accommodate reasonably — or even minimally — Professor Wax’s then-ongoing cancer treatments.”
Wax is suspended for the 2025-26 school year and will only receive half her salary for that duration, The College Fix reported previously.
Disputes between the professor and university have been going on for years, centered on her comments about race.
These include Wax saying that “family breakdown,” “high crime rates,” and “educational underachievement” hold black Americans back more than racism or discrimination.
The university removed her from teaching first-year classes after she made another comment suggesting black law students underperform at the university, an allegation Penn has never disproven, The Fix previously reported.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the [law school] class, and rarely, rarely in the top half,” Wax said in 2018.
