The College Fix

Amy Wax was suspended after saying ‘family breakdown,’ ‘educational underachievement’ hold black Americans back more than racism

University of Pennsylvania Professor Amy Wax just filed a lawsuit against the Ivy League institution, alleging double standards in its protections of free speech after an unresolved, years-long dispute about her comments on race, IQ, and immigration.

Wax’s attorneys filed the lawsuit Thursday after the university refused to retract its suspension of the law professor, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Wax (pictured) is suspended for the 2025-26 school year and will only receive half her salary for that duration, as previously reported by The College Fix.

“The imposition of academic discipline violates the University’s contractual promise to Professor Wax to abide by the principles of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit states.

The case also alleges “the University’s Speech Policy, which is the basis of that discipline, unlawfully discriminates based on the race … of both speakers and targets of speech.”

“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 lawsuit alleges. “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.”

Attorney Jason Torchinsky told the 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, Wax’s lead counsel, said.

The university media relations office did not immediately return a request for comment from The Fix, asking about the lawsuit and the “double standards” allegation.

The professor’s lawsuit could set a precedent for future campus free speech, according to the Beacon:

Wax argues that Penn engaged in race discrimination by punishing speech that offended racial minorities but not speech that offended Jews, citing a litany of cases in which the school declined to discipline professors who deployed anti-Semitic tropes and called for the destruction of Israel.

“Penn tolerated speech targeting Jews while punishing Professor Wax for speech about affirmative action and other racial topics,” the lawsuit reads. “Race therefore was a but-for cause”—that is, a key motivation—”of the decision to discipline Plaintiff Wax.”

If that argument is accepted by Pennsylvania’s Eastern District court, it could become a roadmap for plaintiffs and government agencies seeking to challenge the double standards that emerged on campus after the October 7 attacks, when schools that had spent years policing microaggressions turned on a dime to defend the free speech rights of anti-Israel protesters, some of whom flew terrorist flags and used anti-Semitic rhetoric.

In a December letter to the university warning of a potential lawsuit, Torchinsky brought up the example of lecturer Dwayne Booth who created “blood libel cartoons against Jews” but did not face any disciplinary action from the university.

The letter also pointed out several other examples, including an “artist-in-residence at Penn” who shouted “there is only one solution” during a pro-Palestine rally, The Fix reported at the time:

[Torchinsky] also said the university violated Wax’s contract, which promises free speech, and the American with Disabilities Act, for not accommodating her cancer treatments during the investigation.

The university has targeted Wax for years for her statements on race, IQ, and immigration.

Wax has said “family breakdown,” “high crime rates,” and “educational underachievement” are what hold black Americans back more than racism or discrimination, as previously reported by The College Fix.

She also has suggested black law students underperform at the university, an allegation Penn has never disproven, though it removed her from teaching first-year classes as a result. “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,” she said in 2018.

MORE: Penn offered Amy Wax $50K to be quiet

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