UPenn urges court to rebuff appeal in Amy Wax bias case

By Karen Sloan

March 19 (Reuters) - The University of Pennsylvania has asked a federal appeals court to reject law professor Amy Wax’s bid to revive her discrimination lawsuit against it, saying a lower court judge rightly denied her racial bias claims when he dismissed her case in August.

In the university's opening reply to Wax filed Wednesday in the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Penn claimed that Wax improperly introduced several new arguments in her appeal that she did not raise before the district court, including claims of retaliation by the university amid a long-running dispute over her controversial statements about race.

“Plaintiff’s belated effort to reinvent her legal theories comes nowhere close to satisfying this Court’s rules for issue preservation,” the university's brief said.

Wax, who has denied allegations of racism, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Nor did her attorney Jason Torchinsky of Holtzman Vogel. A Penn spokesperson declined to comment. Wax has previously defended her right to hold unpopular opinions about race and referred to herself as a "casualty in the culture wars.”

Wax, who is white, sued the university in January 2025, alleging Penn violated her tenure rights in October 2024 when it suspended her from teaching for one year with half pay following an investigation into public statements she made about minority groups. She claimed the university is quicker to discipline white people under its free speech policy while overlooking similar conduct by racial minorities.

Senior U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage in Philadelphia dismissed the case in August, calling her racial bias claims “implausible.”

Wax appealed to the 3rd Circuit in January, claiming that Savage improperly relied on Penn’s characterization of “hotly disputed facts” in disciplinary reports about her controversial statements concerning race and defined retaliation too narrowly.

A social welfare law and policy scholar who has taught at Penn’s prestigious law school since 2001, Wax has clashed for years with administrators. Students and faculty first called for her firing in 2017, after she co-authored a newspaper opinion piece arguing that Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior.

The law school in 2018 banned Wax from teaching required first-year courses after she said on a podcast that she had never seen a Black law student graduate in the top quarter of his or her class, and rarely in the top half.

In 2022, Wax wrote a blog post saying the United States is “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration” as long as most Asians vote for Democrats. Former Penn law dean Ted Ruger asked the university’s faculty senate to impose a “major sanction” against her for her statements.

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