Penn law prof Amy Wax loses bid to stop sanctions over comments deemed discriminatory
Wax in March asked the court to prevent Penn from suspending her for one year with half pay starting on August 1, stripping her of her named chair, ending her summer pay and publicly reprimanding her.
She argued that the sanctions would harm her reputation and negatively impact her ability to talk publicly about diversity and affirmative action. Her request for a preliminary injunction is part of a discrimination suit she filed against the university in January.
In his order, opens new tab denying the temporary injunction, Senior Judge Timothy Savage of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wrote that Wax had not demonstrated that she would suffer irreparable harm, a damaged reputation, or a negative impact on her speaking opportunities from the university's sanctions.
'The publicity already generated in this case may contribute to the public's perception of Wax,' Savage wrote. 'However, she has not proven that Penn's sanctions are responsible for that perception or that pausing the suspension would have any impact on it.'
Neither Wax nor her attorneys responded to requests for comment on the ruling, though Wax has previously defended her right to hold unpopular opinions and referred to herself as a "casualty in the culture wars.'
A Penn spokesperson declined to comment.
The ruling is the latest in a long-running conflict between Wax and Penn, where she has taught since 2001. Students and faculty first called for her firing in 2017, after she co-authored a newspaper opinion piece that said 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 the 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, after which former Penn law dean Ted Ruger asked the university's faculty senate to impose a "major sanction" against her.
Her pending lawsuit alleges that Penn is quicker to discipline white people under its free speech policy while overlooking similar conduct by racial minorities and that the university has violated her tenure rights.
Read more:
Lightning-rod law professor Amy Wax sues UPenn for discrimination
Facing sanctions, Penn law prof Amy Wax files grievance against dean
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CNN's resident MAGA defender keeps getting his past Jan. 6 condemnation thrown back in his face
In January 2021, CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings was unwavering in his criticism of Donald Trump following the Capitol riots, saying that the president 'caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories' and 'every Republican must condemn it.' Now that Jennings is the network's resident MAGA defender and Trump has federally taken over Washington while deploying the National Guard into the city because of a so-called 'crime emergency,' the longtime GOP strategist is now getting his past anti-Trump criticism of January 6 thrown back in his face. And, quite frankly, he is not thrilled about it. Hours after the president held his Monday press conference announcing that he was seizing control of the D.C. police department and mobilizing the military to patrol the city's streets to 'rescue' the nation's capital from 'crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,' Jennings appeared on CNN NewsNight to discuss Trump's widely criticized move. Spurred into action by images of former DOGE staffer Edward 'Big Balls' Coristine bloodied following an attempted carjacking and Fox News reports about crime in D.C., Trump has called his move 'Liberation Day in D.C.' while giving the green light to law enforcement to 'do whatever the hell they want.' Critics, meanwhile, have noted that despite the president's rhetoric about 'out-of-control' crime, violent crime has rapidly declined in the city over the past two years and is at a 30-year low. During the Monday night CNN panel discussion, Jennings was unsurprisingly applauding the president's decision as being tough on crime while showing support for law enforcement, prompting fellow panelist Tara Setmayer to take issue with the idea that Trump 'backs the blue' by referencing Jennings' prior condemnation of January 6. 'You look at what Donald Trump did and what MAGA has done to the police officers who defended our Capitol on January 6th,' Setmayer, a former GOP strategist and Never-Trump conservative, declared. 'You want to talk about spitting in the face? Donald Trump spit in the face of every single one of those officers who took that oath to protect and serve on January 6th when he pardoned those insurrectionist bastards and who wanted to take down our Capitol and stop the free and fair, peaceful transfer of power.' One of the president's first acts after his second inauguration was to issue a blanket pardon to roughly 1,600 rioters who were charged with crimes during the attack on the Capitol, including many who were jailed for violently attacking police officers. 'And so how dare people sit here and say that he backs the blue? He abdicated that, because you know what? He did not protect or defend the Constitution and he violated his oath of office,' she continued. 'You know, who said that? 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Jennings sneered, resulting in a heated back-and-forth in which the GOP commentator accused Roginsky of engaging in a 'silly argument.' At one point, Phillip jumped in to ask Jennings to allow Roginsky to finish her point, only for the conservative pundit to grouse that he's 'not gonna allow it' if Roginsky kept taking 'potshots' at him. 'Scott, I know you're thirsty for that seat, but let me finish,' Roginsky snapped back, referencing reports that Jennings is considering a Senate run in Kentucky to replace the retiring McConnell. 'What are you thirsty for? Some kind of relevance out here? I mean, I don't even know what you do for a living,' he fumed in response. An undeterred Roginsky, though, continued on with her point following the broadside from Jennings. 'Can I just finish what I was about to say, which is that on January 6th, [Trump] could have deployed the National Guard. He chose not to. 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