Pitt Professor’s Defamation and Retaliation Claims Are Restored for Trial

The Center for Individual Rights announced today that Dr. Norman Wang won a significant victory before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, which reinstated key claims in his lawsuit against the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the American Heart Association, and several of his former supervisors.

Dr. Wang faced intense retaliation in the summer of 2020 after publishing a scholarly article questioning the use of racial preferences in medical education. Although a district judge dismissed all of his claims last year, the Third Circuit’s ruling revives Dr. Wang’s core legal challenge and marks a significant step forward in his pursuit of justice.

“I have devoted my career to caring for patients, training the next generation of physicians, and contributing to scholarship within my field. When I published this article, I was doing the same thing,” said Dr. Wang. “The appellate ruling gives me a chance to continue my lawsuit. I am greatly relieved that the appellate court strongly supported my version of the events and rejected the narratives and excuses from the defendants. No professor should be demoted for raising honest questions in a peer-reviewed academic journal.”

Dr. Wang, a cardiologist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, spent years studying race-conscious admissions policies in medical education. In a peer-reviewed article, he argued that medical schools and graduate medical training programs should evaluate future physicians as individuals rather than by race or ethnicity. The article went through standard peer review before it was published.

Months later, Pitt and UPMC officials removed Dr. Wang from his position as director of the clinical cardiac fellowship program, launched a coordinated social media campaign accusing him of racism and attacking his academic reputation, and barred him from any contact with medical students, residents, and fellows. University officials and faculty also urged the American Heart Association’s journal to retract Dr. Wang’s article. The journal not only retracted the article, it issued its own press release falsely attacking Dr. Wang and his professional standing.

Dr. Wang sued, alleging that Pitt and others violated his academic freedom and federal civil rights law by retaliating against him for publishing scholarship opposing racial preferences and questioning the legality of those preference programs. He also alleges that they defamed him by falsely portraying him and his scholarship as dishonest, professionally unsound, and racist in print and on social media.

The district court dismissed several of his claims and later granted summary judgment on the rest. Dr. Wang appealed, arguing that the lower court had improperly dismissed his defamation and civil rights retaliation claims despite substantial evidence that he was punished for the content in his article that challenged the legality of Pitt’s racial decision-making.

Yesterday, the Third Circuit reversed key portions of the district court’s decision, restoring Dr. Wang’s defamation and civil rights retaliation claims against several of the originally named defendants, Pitt, and the affiliated hospital system.

Writing for the majority of the court, Judge Stephanos Bibas explained, “A culture that cancels instead of counsels sacrifices persuasion on the altar of power. In doing so, it forgets that the remedy for disfavored speech is more speech, not coerced silence.”

The appellate ruling is a huge step forward in Dr. Wang’s pursuit of justice—for himself and for other scholars who are punished for taking positions that oppose the race-preference and DEI orthodoxy within academia.

The appellate court decision is available here. More information on the case is available here.