Danielle Shockey | February 5, 2026
(Tampa Free Press)
A veteran wine educator at Pennsylvania State University is taking her employer to federal court, alleging that her professional advancement was derailed not by a lack of expertise, but by her refusal to embrace the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates.
Dr. Molly Kelly, an Enology Extension Educator who has been with the school since 2018, filed the lawsuit on February 5, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Represented by the Liberty Justice Center, Kelly argues that the university’s reliance on DEI criteria violates her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, turning what should be a merit-based process into a test of ideological loyalty.
Dr. Kelly currently holds the rank of Educator Level 4 and first became eligible for a promotion to Level 5 in 2023. According to the legal complaint, her applications for the higher tier were rejected twice. While the State Promotion Review Committee reportedly acknowledged she had met some of the necessary requirements for the promotion, their formal feedback focused heavily on what they perceived as a lack of social justice advocacy.
In a 2024 denial letter, the committee specifically pointed to “minimum diversity training hours” and the use of an outdated affirmative action statement as reasons for the rejection. When Kelly reapplied in 2025, the committee doubled down, stating her efforts felt like she was merely “checking the box” rather than demonstrating a genuine commitment to reaching underserved audiences.
The Liberty Justice Center, a non-profit law firm known for challenging government overreach, frames this as a clear-cut case of “compelled speech.” They argue that by requiring faculty to produce DEI-centric narratives to earn promotions, public institutions are effectively forcing employees to adopt and parrot specific political viewpoints.
Reilly Stephens, Senior Counsel at the center, noted that these requirements function as tools of coercion, demanding that academic scholarship serve specific ideological ends rather than objective research or community service.
This lawsuit is part of a broader trend of legal challenges hitting higher education; the Liberty Justice Center is currently involved in similar cases against the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Arizona, both involving faculty members who faced professional repercussions after pushing back against DEI initiatives.
Penn State’s extension program, which provides research-based information to the state’s agricultural sectors, now finds itself at the center of a national debate over the legality of race-based hiring and promotion practices.
Critics of the university’s stance argue that prioritizing DEI metrics over traditional performance measures undermines the “marketplace of ideas” essential to public universities.
As the case moves forward, it will likely serve as a pivotal test for how much leeway public institutions have in mandating social agendas for their staff. For Dr. Kelly, the suit seeks more than just a title change; it seeks a ruling that her merit as a scientist and educator should be the only thing on the scale.
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