A federal court is holding UCLA to account for turning its back on Jewish students who were blocked from campus by anti-Israel protesters at the end of last school year.
Going forward, the school must provide them the same access to campus areas and resources that it provides all its other students, ruled Judge Mark Scarsi in a scathing opinion denouncing the “unimaginable” and “abhorrent” violation of their constitutional rights.
Last April, UCLA stood by while its Jewish students were harassed, assaulted, and intimidated by pro-Hamas agitators camped out in a major thoroughfare on school grounds.
With the school looking on and even facilitating them, the activists created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” that effectively barred both students and faculty from going to their classes, offices, and the library. To get by the encampment, students had to pass a loyalty test—and disavow Israel.
And there was no response from “any kind of authority or law enforcement”:
In a hard-hitting lawsuit filed this past June, a group of Jewish students sued UCLA over its refusal to remove the faculty-supported, school-facilitated antisemitic encampments that made it impossible for them to study, go to class, or simply meet with friends on campus.
We covered their case here:
Lawsuit: UCLA Facilitated “Jew Exclusion Zone” Blocking Access To Heart of Campus
The students alleged a barrage of constitutional and civil rights violations by the school administrators and asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the school from allowing those rights to be violated again.
Yesterday, the court agreed to grant the injunction—and it ripped UCLA a new one:
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. 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.UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.
And in case anyone starts up about whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, the court made clear “all references to the exclusion of Jewish students shall include exclusion of Jewish students based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.”
The court did not require UCLA to implement any specific policies or procedures. Its ruling only requires that once “UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students.”
With the new school year fast approaching, UCLA had not assuaged the students’ concerns that it would protect them when, in all likelihood, the anti-Israel protesters return. Notwithstanding the school’s efforts, the court “perceive[d] an imminent risk” that when the fall semester begins, Jewish students will once again be excluded.
After weeks of relative quiet, that’s the same risk students will soon face at universities all over the country. As this UCLA alum points out, the court’s injunction should be a lesson to all of them.
UPDATE: UCLA has filed a notice of appeal of the district court’s decision to the Ninth Circuit.
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