AAUP Nets Legal Victory Against EEOC in Penn Case

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Tuesday vacated the district court decision that ordered the University of Pennsylvania to turn over the names and contact information of Jewish employees to the Trump administration. Though the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had already withdrawn its subpoena, the American Association of University Professors, a party to the case, still considers the decision a “significant victory” that will protect other institutions from similar probes.

“With the district court ruling still on the books, the EEOC could go to another university, make a really similar demand and say, ‘You shouldn’t fight back on this—look at this ruling from Penn. You’re going to lose,’” said Lorena Grundy, a practice assistant professor in chemical engineering and vice president of AAUP-Penn, which was also party to the case alongside the national organization. “With the district court ruling now vacated, it becomes a much less useful tool for the Trump administration to try to compel other universities to provide similar information.”

The appellate court’s order is the final parry in this particular legal fight between the EEOC and Penn, which began in November when the EEOC asked the district court to enforce its July 2025 subpoena seeking the names and contact information for members of Jewish clubs and organizations, as well as employees in the Jewish Studies Department. The district court sided with the EEOC in March, and Penn and the interveners—the AAUP, AAUP-Penn, Penn’s Jewish Law Student Association, the Penn Association of Senior & Emeritus Faculty, and the American Academy of Jewish Research—appealed.

In July, the Trump administration abruptly withdrew its subpoena. In return, the university dropped its appeal and agreed it would not seek to vacate the district court’s March decision.

But Penn’s allied interveners did not do the same. By continuing with their appeal, they could seek to scrap the decision and therefore take away any precedent the Trump administration could cite in similar legal scenarios.

“It was never going to be a legally binding [precedent] because it was only a district court ruling, but it could still be persuasive if they were to say, ‘We won in this district court, so we’re pretty likely to win in your district court, too. You shouldn’t bother expending all the resources to fight back against the subpoena,’” Grundy said. “And for the other district court judge, in this hypothetical case, it would be persuasive to them that one of their colleagues made a decision in a very similar case.”

Joining the case as a third party was also strategic, Grundy said. The interveners could have filed amicus briefs in support of Penn, but they “wanted to have a legal voice” in the case.

Spokespeople for Penn and the EEOC did not return Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment on Tuesday.

Faculty and administrators are not often allied in campus battles. For AAUP-Penn members, it was “really encouraging” to fight alongside the university administration instead of against them, Grundy said. (During the district court hearing, Penn’s lawyer said that it was the “first time that the AAUP has agreed with the Penn administration on anything,” she added).

“Being in higher ed right now is just being on the receiving end of an onslaught of attacks against your academic freedom, your shared governance, your First Amendment rights, your funding—just everything, all the time,” Grundy said. “And so it feels really good to know that we were able to build this really strong coalition of people across the political spectrum, across different roles within the university—even people outside the university were able to come together on this.”