A federal judge in a Tuesday ruling ridiculed administrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, for allowing an anti-Israel encampment to block Jewish students’ access to campus — the first court rebuke of demonstrations that descended into antisemitic threats and intimidation at many colleges last spring.
US District Judge Mark Scarsi granted a preliminary injunction set to take effect Thursday that forces UCLA to maintain equal access to programs, activities or campus areas for Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
In a scathing, 16-page order, Scarsi blasted UCLA’s Board of Regents for openly maintaining in court proceedings thus far that it had “no responsibility” to defend Jewish students’ religious freedoms, since the anti-Israel tent cities — which sprang up on campuses nationwide including at Columbia University — were “engineered by third-party protesters.”
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“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles,Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” he wrote, partially in italics.
“This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” the judge added.
Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a statement that the ruling “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs” of the student community.
“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako added.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented the UCLA Jewish students who filed the complaint against the Regents Board and Chancellor Gene Block, who admitted in congressional testimony earlier this year that the school had taken no action against demonstrators who blockaded campus.
“Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,”said Becket president Mark Rienzi, one of the attorneys on the case. “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation. UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”
“No student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish,”added Yitzchok Frankel, who is a rising third-year law student at UCLA and one of the students who initiated the suit. “I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”
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Protesters erected a “Jew Exclusion Zone” at the Westwood campus that Frankel said had barred him from his ordinary path to classes.
The law student and father of four also faced antisemitic harassment in the spring semester for wearing his kippah.
Notably, the prohibition for future protests will include behavior that excludes “Jewish students based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.”
UCLA’s encampment in late April was one of the few to showcase aviolent clashbetween the anti-Israel protesters and counter-protesters, in an all-out melee of pepper spray, firecrackers and fists.
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It was swiftly declared an unlawful assembly and police arrested more than 200 anti-Israel demonstrators.
The protest and subsequent counter-protest were among several that highlighted the divide between Republicans and some Democrats over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, a key 2024 election issue.
Congressional Republicans launched investigations into Ivy League universities for fostering antisemitism on campus and hauled presidents and administrators in to be grilled about breaches of their schools’ codes of conduct in public hearings.
Meanwhile, Democrats were split between the center and left-flank of their caucus, with moderate lawmakers reaffirming support for the Jewish state and “Squad” members echoing protesters’ calls for universities to divest from Israel and condemn its military campaign in Gaza, which led to a high civilian death toll.
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Asked during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing in May about video footage showing keffiyeh-clad demonstrators preventing a UCLA undergrad from entering campus, Block confirmed only that the incident was being investigated.
He added that the blocking students access to campus based on their race, religion or ethnicity “could be” an expellable offense — but did not elaborate.
In another exchange with “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Block clarified that “any part of campus is open to students, so blocking him was really inappropriate.”
“This encampment was against policy, this violated time, place, and manner,” he also said.
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UCLA is currently weighing an appeal of the ruling to the Ninth Circuit.
The US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is also currently investigating “shared ancestry” discrimination complaints against UCLA, which the Anti-Defamation League has already slapped with a “D” letter grade for its handling of antisemitism on campus.
