He sued in 2025 in an attempt to regain his job and claimed the university discriminated against him. The July lawsuit accused KU of retaliating because of the 2025 discrimination complaints. Central to the newest lawsuit is KU’s choice to create a temporary faculty review board, made up of non-tenured faculty, that was tasked with wading through charges against Tao. Tao objected to the review board’s makeup, but the board dismissed his concerns in March of this year, according to the lawsuit. Tao asked KU to pay him for lost wages and an unspecified amount for “reputational injury, emotional distress, pain and suffering.”