Feds Sue UCLA Over Campus Antisemitism—Again

Feds Sue UCLA Over Campus Antisemitism—Again

For the second time this year, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed a lawsuit against the University of California over the antisemitism running wild on its Los Angeles campus after October 7.

In February, the DOJ sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment. This new case was filed against the school yesterday for tolerating antisemitic harassment of its Jewish and Israeli students, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon announced the lawsuit:

Sued UCLA more today. Stay tuned. https://t.co/skxzAmQPeA

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) May 26, 2026

The case filed in the Central District of California follows on the DOJ’s investigation into reports of antisemitic incidents against students on UCLA’s campus and written findings concluding, in part, that UCLA failed to fulfill its legal obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in responding to those incidents, the Department said in a press release.

UCLA was one of many elite schools where campus antisemitism escalated after the Hamas attacks. It was also one of the worst offenders. Emboldened by months of getting away with harassing and intimidating Jews, in April 2024, anti-Israel activists pitched tents in the heart of the campus that effectively blocked both students and faculty from going to their classes, offices, and the library.

Readers may recall that a group of Jewish students brought a successful First Amendment lawsuit over the “Jew Exclusion Zone.” The court sided with the students, denouncing the “unimaginable” and “abhorrent” violation of their religious rights and requiring the school to provide them the same access to campus it provides all its other students. The students later settled with the school for six million dollars.

In its Title VI lawsuit, the DOJ says UCLA’s top administrators knew that demonstrators attacked Jews and physically prevented them from attending class. Jewish and Israeli students were slapped, kicked, beaten with sticks, doused with pepper spray and even knocked unconscious. All the while, school leadership sat on its hands, taking no serious action until two weeks later, the lawsuit continues—a “do-nothing” strategy that left those students at the mercy of an angry, armed mob.

The school cannot claim ignorance of the harassment, because its own antisemitism Task Force published a damning report documenting its failure to break up the encampments and protect its Jewish students.

Few, if any, of the occupiers who blocked the heart of campus and terrorized Jews faced any meaningful punishment from the school, according to the complaint.

UCLA’s own Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion—whose director’s wife was participating in the very encampment he was supposed to be investigating—allegedly received over 100 complaints about antisemitism and anti-Israeli hostility that it routinely ignored.

And yet, even after the encampment was finally disbanded, UCLA dug in its heels, claiming in the students’ lawsuit that it had “no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.”

The Department of Justice is now asking a federal court to make UCLA do what it still refuses to do after the first federal lawsuit, a court ruling, a private settlement, and its own Task Force’s condemnation: Comply with Title VI and pay back the taxpayer money it collected while falsely certifying that it was doing so all along.

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