The fallout from last month’s disruption of a UCLA Law Federalist Society event took a significant new turn on Friday, when a U.S. Senator announced a formal investigation, prompted not just by the disruption itself, but by what UCLA’s own administrators did—and failed to do—next.
Senator Eric Schmitt, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution wrote to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk and UCLA Law Dean Michael Waterstone that he was investigating “serious First Amendment and civil rights violations” at the University of California, Los Angeles, including most recently at the School of Law.”
On April 21st, the Federalist Society chapter at UCLA Law School hosted an event featuring Homeland Security general counsel James Percival. What should have been civil discourse about Trump’s immigration policies descended into juvenile name-calling and nastiness as soon as the speakers were introduced.
Protesters outside the event shouted profanities. Those inside heckled Percival as he spoke, set off their cell phones to ring in unison, booed and insulted him, called him a “Nazi,” and held up vulgar posters—“F— you, loser,” written on one, “How’s Trump’s C**ck Taste?” on another. Midway through, about 50 of them stomped out of the room.
The protesters “weren’t there to hear, listen, or question, they were there to disrupt in a coordinated manner,” the event’s moderator, Pepperdine Law Professor Greg McNeal, later posted on X.
As usual, university leadership turned a blind eye to these assaults on free speech coming from the left. Dean Waterstone released a mealy-mouthed statement shortly after the event, noting that some demonstrators were “issued warnings” and “were either escorted out or left of their own accord.” While the school recognized “some disruption,” “the moderated conversation continued throughout, and the event proceeded to its conclusion.”
In other words, the protesters got off scot-free.
Then, to make matters much worse, Assistant Dean Bayrex Martí sent emails to the Federalist Society students, threatening them with punishment if they revealed the names of the protesters who disrupted the event, the very students UCLA had declined to discipline.
Releasing those names “would undoubtedly qualify as protected speech,” Senator Schmitt wrote on Friday.
And while Dean Martí reportedly walked back his comments in a subsequent email, Dean Waterstone has, as of now, remained silent, leaving the conservative students in a state of uncertainty over whether they would be punished for naming the protesters.
As a public university, UCLA is bound by the First Amendment. UCLA’s failure to prevent the anti-ICE students from disrupting the event, standing alone, violated the First Amendment rights of the Federalist Society students who hosted the event, the letter says. But Dean Martí’s email, with its threat of retaliation, escalated the assault on those rights. The move was “an attempt to impose a prior restraint on them through a viewpoint-discriminatory threat of retaliation if they engaged in constitutionally protected speech,” Senator Schmitt wrote.
The Senate letter seeks to force the school out of its silence. It demands that UCLA explain the nature of the “review” and “necessary steps” Dean Waterstone said the school would undertake to protect its students, and state whether it will continue to assert the authority to punish students for releasing the names of the event protesters. And pointedly, it asks whether UCLA Law will investigate Assistant Dean Martí or other administrators for violating the First Amendment.
Last month’s fiasco at the Federalist Society event is by now part of an all-too-familiar pattern at UCLA, the target of multiple lawsuits and federal actions for violating students’ civil and constitutional rights. As the letter puts it: “Each time, a politically disfavored group of students attempts to engage in regular behavior, such as walking on campus or hosting a guest speaker. Each time, a mob of leftist UCLA student-activists violates UCLA’s student-conduct rules—and federal civil rights statutes—by preventing those other students from engaging in that protected activity. And each time, UCLA tries to disclaim responsibility by shifting blame to the leftist student-activist mob.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has already put UCLA on the DOJ’s radar for allowing the disruptors’ “hecklers’ veto” to squelch the Federalist Society event.
And now, Senator Schmitt has given the school until May 22nd to show why it should not remain there.
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