At the height of campus protests last spring over the Israel-Hamas war, a group of pro-Palestinian activists at the University of California at Los Angeles set up an encampment with checkpoints to limit who went in and out.
On Tuesday a federal judge issued a harshly worded preliminary injunction blasting the university for allowing Jewish students to be excluded from parts of the campus “because they refused to denounce their faith.”
The order enforcing the injunction requires that “if any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students,” the university must stop providing them to anyone.
The encampment was set up on April 25 on Royce Quad, which the order describes as a major thoroughfare and gathering place that borders several campus buildings, including the library. It was surrounded by plywood and metal barriers, and guarded by protesters who, according to the judge, refused entry to “people who supported the existence of the State of Israel.”
The encampment, which was cleared by the police on May 2, interfered with instruction by blocking students’ access to classrooms, the judge wrote. Even after the main encampment was cleared, protesters set up tents and other barriers that, he said, prevented some students from entering classrooms and forced some to miss final exams.
UCLA later arrested dozens of protesters trying to set up new encampments.
The order, issued by Judge Mark C. Scarsi of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was a response to a lawsuit that three Jewish students at UCLA filed in June.
“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,” Scarsi, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald J. Trump, wrote. “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 said the order, believed to be the first against a university for allowing a pro-Palestinian encampment, would “improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.”
“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor for strategic communications, said. She added that the university is “closely reviewing the judge’s ruling and considering all our options.” The injunction takes effect on Thursday, and late Wednesday the university appealed Scarsi’s order.
‘The Jew Exclusion Zone’
Eric C. Rassbach, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview on Wednesday that the injunction should be a warning to campuses where protests are likely to break out again this fall. “I think it sends a pretty strong message that allowing third parties to take over part of your campus and exclude people, segregating them by ethnic or religious backgrounds, is not going to be acceptable under the law,” he said.
On July 29 the court ordered the opposing parties to meet and try to come up with a compromise that would protect the plaintiffs’ rights and still allow the university the flexibility it needs to operate. According to Tuesday’s order, they were unable to come up with an acceptable solution, prompting the judge to act.
An amicus brief filed by a group called Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA said it was the pro-Palestinian protesters who were beaten up by pro-Israel counterprotesters when violence broke out at the encampment on April 30. The counterprotesters reportedly threw wooden planks, traffic cones, and a piece of metal fencing at the pro-Palestinian encampment. The campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, reported that the campus police had mostly stood back until Los Angeles police officers were brought in to stop the fighting.
“Faculty members have been beaten, arrested, doxxed, they have had their civil rights violated, sustained other physical injuries, and faced serious administrative retribution while acting to support students who are speaking out against war crimes and human-rights violations,” the amicus brief said.
“In addition, students and faculty of the Palestine solidarity encampment have been subjected to police brutality and mob attacks by self-proclaimed Zionists and white supremacists, representing an almost total failure of UCLA to provide timely intervention or protection,” the brief said.
Rassbach said those complaints are “not relevant to this lawsuit.” The judge agreed, writing that the group’s accusations, if true, could support a claim that pro-Palestinian activists’ rights also had been violated. But such a claim would be better addressed in a separate legal action, he said.
Mark L. Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund and another lawyer for the plaintiffs, released a statement celebrating the ruling. “Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” he wrote. “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.”
The dueling perspectives at UCLA illustrate the bind administrators face when protests break out, with each side complaining that the university hasn’t done enough to protect them, whether their primary concern is free speech or physical safety. Protests on dozens of campuses over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza have resulted in more than 3,100 arrests since April, with many students still in academic and legal limbo.
Yitzchok Frankel, a rising third-year law student at UCLA who was one of the plaintiffs, contends he was harassed last semester for wearing a kippah, or Jewish skullcap. He said the protests had forced him to change his regular route through campus to avoid what his lawsuit refers to as “the Jew Exclusion Zone.” Frankel also said he’d had to cancel plans on campus with his family and missed out on opportunities to mentor incoming Jewish students during orientation week. Frankel, a father of four, said in a written statement that “no student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish. I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”
Another law student who is also a plaintiff, Eden Shemuelian, said the university’s failure to keep Jewish students safe had made him miss out on law-school orientation events.
“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,” the preliminary injunction says. “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.”
On April 30, the night of the most intense clashes on campus, Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California system, released a statement explaining why the police were ultimately called in. He said that when free expression “blocks the ability of students to learn or to express their own viewpoints, when it meaningfully disrupts the functioning of the university, or when it threatens the safety of students, or anyone else, we must act.”
