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.
In an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation in 2024, Wax claimed she was being targeted for statements she made outside of the classroom and that claims of her making students uncomfortable in class were false.
“Penn has zero interest in developing and adhering to principles of a consistent position on free expression, zero interest,” Wax told the DCNF at the time. “They can protect the people they basically agree with or favor, like the pro-Palestinians, anti-Israeli, antisemitic, and they can punish people like me. They have never articulated a consistent position.”
Wax and UPenn did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Wax alleged UPenn discriminated against her “based on the racial content of her speech,” saying she was unfairly punished for what she said about certain races while other individuals were not punished for speaking negatively about other races. The court denied this claim, stating “anti-discrimination statutes protect speakers, not speech” and that Wax failed to prove her discipline was a result of her race.
“There is nothing Wax can add that would make her discrimination claims plausible,” the decision concludes. “Thus, because amendment would be futile, Wax will not be given leave to amend her complaint once again.”
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