Court Tosses Penn Prof Amy Wax’s Suit Claiming Ivy League ‘Double Standards’

A federal court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Amy Wax, a tenured law professor at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) who alleged racial discrimination and claimed she was punished by the school for what she said was conservative speech.

Wax’s lawsuit claims she was discriminated against “based on the content of her speech and her status as a White Jewish woman,” but the judge ruled the case was not a First Amendment case and that she was punished for “flagrant unprofessional conduct,” according to court documents. Wax was first flagged by the university for her alleged inappropriate conduct in 2022 and was later sanctioned by the school, which included a public reprimand, a one-year suspension at half pay, and the loss of summer pay in perpetuity.

“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 court decision reads. “It calls for us to determine whether offensive comments directed at racial minorities are protected by those laws.”

The statement allegedly made by Wax detailed in the court document include the professor telling a black student “You can have two plants that grow under the same conditions, and one will just grow higher than the other,” in response to whether “she agreed with the claim that Black people are inherently inferior to white people.” Wax also allegedly stated on a panel that “our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.”

Wax also allegedly “publicly described Black people as having ‘different average IQs’ than people of other races” and said that “the United States is better off with fewer Asians” because “Asian people lack ‘thoughtful and audacious individualism,’” according to the court decision.