Liz Lykins | February 10, 2026
(wng.org)
When teacher of wine and winemaking Molly Kelly tried to get a promotion at Penn State University Extension School, officials told her that she needed to do more diversity work. So the enology educator reached out to LGBTQ and Greek Orthodox–owned businesses, visiting the businesses and giving technical expertise.
But when Kelly reapplied for the Penn State promotion a year later, officials questioned how this work boosted her required diversity training. They denied her job advancement again, stating that her actions only “checked the box.”
Kelly sued Penn State Extension on Thursday, contending that the school’s rejections demonstrate an illegal form of viewpoint discrimination. She said Penn State compelled her to stick to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda to advance her role, rather than relying on her merits. Her lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges the university has violated the First and 14th Amendment.
Diversity efforts in the 1960s and ’70s initially focused on ensuring employers wouldn’t pass over minority employees for promotions. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, workplaces shifted to emphasize DEI and anti-racism training, according to the Center for Urban and Racial Equity, though employees have challenged many company policies over free speech concerns. President Joe Biden’s administration began promoting DEI hiring in 2021 after an executive order made diversity efforts a public priority for federal workplaces. The Trump administration reversed the Biden policy in 2025.
Kelly started working at Penn State in 2018. She applied in 2023 to move from a Level 4 educator to a Level 5 in the university’s “Promotion Criteria Grid,” which includes some requirements centering on merit and others focusing on civil rights and diversity.
The DEI requirements increase with each level. Educators in intermediate levels must show “evidence of program impact with underrepresented audiences.” But for Kelly’s desired Level 5, the grid requires such evidence to be “robust.” Kelly also had to write about “what she learned” by meeting the requirement.
School officials denied her first promotion request in 2024, stating that Kelly had low diversity training hours and had provided no evidence to show that she worked to reach underserved audiences. In her application the following year, Kelly highlighted her site visits and technical expertise work with LGBTQ and Greek Orthodox businesses. But again, the school rejected her application.
School officials questioned how helping the businesses qualified as diversity training and said that she didn’t appear to be making an effort to learn more about DEI. They recommended she seek other DEI “development activities.”
But Kelly’s lawsuit argues that Penn State didn’t accept her outreach to LGBTQ and Greek Orthodox–owned businesses because it didn’t fit the university’s “narrow” idea of diversity. According to the suit, the required written reflection demonstrates that the school focused on her beliefs and not just her attendance at DEI-related events.
“The university was not neutrally assessing Dr. Kelly’s professional competence,” the lawsuit alleges. “It was policing her thoughts—demanding not just participation in DEI activities, but evidence of genuine ideological conversion.”
Penn State Extension declined to comment on Kelly’s suit.
While she tried to comply with Penn State’s requirements, she didn’t do so in a way that fit with the school’s viewpoint, said Reilly Stephens, an attorney at Liberty Justice Center, which represents Kelly.
“Her work is about grapes, and how you make food—it’s not ideological,” Stephens said. “Basically, the only work that gets rewarded anymore is ideological.”
But ideological efforts should not determine hiring and promotions, he said, adding that under the First Amendment, Kelly has a right to be free from viewpoint discrimination by the government.
Other schools have also based hirings, promotions, and firings on viewpoints about issues like DEI and gender, Stephens noted. Last year, a professor sued the University of Illinois Chicago after it fired him for criticizing the school’s DEI-based hiring practices. In November, a tenured professor at the University of Arizona sued school officials for barring him from various governance committees, alleging it did so because he sought records on the school’s race-based hiring.
Also in 2025, after six years of litigation, a Kentucky professor reached a $1.6 million settlement with the University of Louisville, which had fired him over his remarks on gender dysphoria.
Public universities can’t require employees to adhere to a particular viewpoint for their career advancement, said Ernie Walton, the dean at Regent University’s School of Law. He said Penn State should base its promotion decisions only on Kelly’s merits, such as the number of articles she published or classes she taught.
“[The government] can’t condition promotion based on agreement with a certain viewpoint. That is a straightforward violation of the First Amendment,” Walton said. “The Supreme Court has held time and time again [that] the government cannot do that. They can’t pick a favorite viewpoint as a winner.”
The university doubled down on its viewpoint when it rejected Kelly’s diversity work with the businesses, Walton added. She tried to check the required boxes, but Penn State dubbed her work not diverse enough.
“It’s not your classic conservative Christian [case]. If she has checked the box, even for LGBTQ, it just demonstrates how far these universities are willing to go,” Walton said. “You can imagine, for people who don’t want to check the boxes at all, how difficult it would be to get a promotion.”
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