Penn filed a motion on Monday requesting a Philadelphia court temporarily halt the enforcement of a ruling ordering the University to comply with a federal subpoena seeking information about Jewish students and faculty.
The April 13 motion to stay was filed alongside a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The filing is the latest development in an ongoing legal battle between Penn and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over whether the agency has the authority to enforce a subpoena issued in July 2025.
The motion comes after U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Pappert ordered the University to respond to the agency’s subpoena requests by May 1.
In its memo, lawyers for the University argued that Penn was “likely to prevail on the appeal” and would face “irreparable injury absent a stay.”
“Whether the constitution protects against the compelled disclosure of religious information lies at the heart of the privacy claim Penn asserts in defense of the subpoena, and it is not a question squarely addressed by the Court’s decision,” Penn’s Monday filing read. “Penn’s position, however, is rooted in prevailing Supreme Court precedent.”
Requests for comment were left with a University spokesperson and the EEOC. After the initial ruling, a University spokesperson told The Daily Pennsylvanian that Penn intended to appeal the decision.
Penn argued that the Third Circuit is “likely to find” that the EEOC’s charge of a hostile workplace does not comply with the agency’s “statutory and regulatory” requirement to provide a clear statement of alleged wrongdoing. According to the motion, the EEOC “does not remotely” meet that requirement.
The University also cited the lack of precedent for the EEOC’s subpoena.
“This demand is so novel that the EEOC has cited no authority in which a court enforced a subpoena conscripting an employer to identify employees of a specific religion,” Penn’s memorandum in support of its motion read.
“For their legal arguments, respondents contend the charge of discrimination is invalid and the subpoena violates the United States Constitution in various ways,” Pappert wrote in a March 31 memo filed alongside the order. “But the charge is valid and the constitutional claims are easily dispensed with.”
Several student leaders, legal experts, and campus organizations criticized Pappert’s decision in the days following the order.
Wharton School professor Amanda Shanor — who represents a group of intervening organizations in the case — wrote to the DP that the ruling could set a precedent for the government collecting information about any minority group.
“The constitutional freedoms at stake — to be able to join religious and civic groups of your choice, to attend events, and teach and research freely without worry that your name and contact information will be put on a government list — are foundational to our democracy,” she wrote at the time. “We are optimistic that higher courts will uphold these bedrock constitutional principles and that we will prevail on appeal.”
In his memo, Pappert wrote that the Court’s duty in enforcing the subpoena is to specifically “determine if the charge of discrimination is valid, whether the subpoena seeks information relevant to the charge and whether the subpoena unduly burdens Penn.”
He argued that the EEOC’s subpoena “easily clears” the bar for relevancy because the employees whose contact information was requested “are reasonably likely to have information relevant to whether Penn subjected employees to religious discrimination.”
The EEOC sued Penn in November 2025, alleging that the University failed to comply with the subpoena — which was issued as part of the agency’s investigation into alleged workplace antisemitism on campus.
A University spokesperson told the DP at the time that Penn “cooperated extensively” with the EEOC but would not provide “personal and confidential” information of students and employees without their consent.
That same month, a petition criticizing the subpoena received hundreds of signatures from members of the Penn community. Students and faculty expressed concern over the implications of compiling the lists demanded by the EEOC.
In January, the University filed a brief outlining its criticisms of the subpoena requests. It alleged that the EEOC ignored “the frightening and well-documented history of governmental entities that undertook efforts to identify and assemble information regarding persons of Jewish ancestry.”
The EEOC responded later that month, describing Penn’s arguments as “disingenuous” and arguing that the investigation was “no different” from any other request for information.
Pappert heard oral arguments from Penn, the EEOC, and intervening groups in March. The University and Penn-affiliated intervenors described the EEOC’s demands as requiring the University to submit “lists of Jews” to the agency.
