WILLIAMSPORT — An Extension educator at Penn State who has made contributions to the wine industry in Pennsylvania and beyond claims she was twice denied promotion because she failed to demonstrate sufficient ideological commitment to the university’s DEI orthodoxy.

Molly Kelly makes the allegation in a suit she filed this month in the U.S. Middle District Court against the Penn State Extension School, university president Neeli Bendapudi and Jeffrey Hyde, associate dean and director of Penn State Extension.

DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. President Donald Trump, hours after being sworn in for his second term, signed an executive order banning DEI considerations in federal hiring.

Kelly accuses the university of having prescribed orthodoxy on matters of diversity and social policy and penalizing her by not promoting her for refusing to confess her faith therein.

Penn State did not respond when asked for a comment on the allegation. In the past, it has stated it does not comment on pending litigation.

Kelly states in her complaint that she filed the suit “to vindicate her constitutional rights and to restore the freedom of thought that must prevail in America’s public universities.”

She is seeking to have her promotion application reconsidered under constitutionally sound, viewpoint-neutral criteria.

Kelly has been an enology (science of wine and winemaking) educator at Penn State Extension since 2018 and is a member and co-leader of the Grape and Wine Team.

The basis of her suit is being denied promotion in 2024 and 2025 to Extension educator level 5 (senior professional).

After her promotion was denied in 2024, Kelly revised her dossier to address the review committee’s prior feedback.

The committee, according to court documents, “questioned how doing site visits and providing technical expertise to LGBTQ and Greek Orthodox-owned businesses is receiving diversity training.”

Kelly, in her suit, contends that her outreach to businesses owned by members of the LGBTQ and Greek Orthodox communities is, by an objective measure, “diverse.”

The Lycoming County resident argues the committee rejected that outreach because it did not conform to its narrow, ideologically preferred conception of what “diversity” means and which groups count as sufficiently “diverse.”

The demand that Kelly demonstrate “an effort to learn” and the committee’s dismissal of her work as merely “check(ing) the box” reveals the university was demanding a confession of genuine ideological conversion, not merely participation in professional development activities, the suit contends.

Her complaint cites the university’s promotion criteria grid that she claims shows DEI requirements escalate with each rank, with Level 5 requiring “robust evidence of program impact with underrepresented audiences” and the ability to design programs that are “culturally sensitive and relevant.”

Kelly argues these requirements condition career advancement on the expression of government-preferred viewpoints.

She contends the defendants imposed a penalty — denial of promotion — for her exercising her First Amendment right not to express the university’s preferred DEI viewpoints and for expressing her own approach to diversity.

The DEI ideological requirements are not reasonably related to Kelly’s professional qualifications as an enology educator, the suit claims.

Kelly is seeking unspecified damages for lost wages and benefits, emotional distress and violations of her constitutional rights.

She also wants the court to declare:

— Denial of her promotion based on DEI criteria violated her rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.

— Unconstitutional Penn State’s promotion criteria insofar as it requires faculty to express ideological commitment to DEI principles and describe “what they have learned” from diversity training.