Court Orders UCLA to Protect Jewish Students from Being Excluded from Campus Spaces

United States District Judge Mark C. Scarsi issued a preliminary injunction on Aug. 13 that UCLA has to protect Jewish students from any efforts to obstruct them from campus spaces.

“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 wrote in the injunction. “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.”

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. – Judge Mark C. Scarsi

As previously reported by The Journal, a lawsuit was filed against UCLA by three Jewish students: Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum and Eden Shemuelian. Frankel, a law student and Orthodox Jew, alleged in the lawsuit that he and other students holding a peaceful pro-Israel rally nearby the encampment and were surrounded and targeted by anti-Israel protesters. Ghayoum alleged that he was blocked by members of the encampment from crossing through Royce Quad to meet a friend of his at Ackerman Union and that he missed four days of class because he felt unsafe on campus as a result of the encampment. Shemuelian, a law student and observant Jew, alleged that because she was forced to park near the encampment to go to class due to parking restrictions, she was forced to hear “antisemitic chants” and see “antisemitic signs” from the encampment and that her request for her to take her final exam off-campus due to safety concerns were ignored. Shemuelian also alleged that when she and other Jewish students were observing the encampment, numerous security members mocked them.

Scarsi noted that UCLA has taken action after the anti-Israel encampment was dismantled to address the matter, such as establishing an Office of Campus Safety and delegating daily campus safety to the Emergency Operations. However, Scarsi concluded that such actions were not enough to prevent future harm to Jewish students, pointing to there were subsequent instances of anti-Israel protesters disrupting campus activities on May 6, May 23 and June 10; on June 10, when the protesters attempted to set up another encampment, some students missed their final exams because they were unable to enter classrooms as a result of the protesters and other students had to be evacuated in the middle of their exams.

“While the May and June protests do not appear to have resulted in the same religious-belief-based exclusion as the prior encampment that gives rise to the Plaintiffs’ free exercise concerns, the Court perceives an imminent risk that such exclusion will return in the fall with students, staff, faculty, and non-UCLA community members,” wrote Scarsi.

The judge later added: “Under the Court’s injunction, UCLA retains flexibility to administer the university. Specifically, the injunction does not mandate any specific policies and procedures UCLA must put in place, nor does it dictate any specific acts UCLA must take in response to campus protests. Rather, the injunction requires only that, if any part of 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. How best to make any unavailable programs, activities, and campus areas available again is left to UCLA’s discretion.”

Mark Rienzi, president of Becket Law of Religious Liberty and an attorney for the students, told The Journal in an email that this means that “UCLA can still apply its normal disciplinary rules to Jewish students. It doesn’t allow the decision-makers at UCLA to keep treating the exclusion of Jews as an acceptable ‘cost of doing business’ when deciding how to address activist disruptions on campus.” He also explained that under the injunction, “UCLA is still in charge of its own campus. But the court’s order means that however UCLA decides to manage its campus, allowing the exclusion of Jewish students is not an option on the table.” Additionally, the court “can take action if UCLA fails to comply,” said Rienzi.

The injunction will go into effect on Aug. 15.

According to a press release from Becket, the university is expected to appeal the injunction.

“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a statement to The Journal. “The district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”

“No student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish,” Frankel said in a statement. “I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”

Rienzi said in a statement: “Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus. 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.”

Alex Morey, vice president of campus advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told The Journal, “From a free speech standpoint, the law was already quite clear. UCLA is a public university with a binding constitutional obligation to protect both protest and counterprotest on campus. That includes a duty to address misconduct, such as removing protesters who are acting unlawfully, including by preventing their fellow students from accessing or moving around campus.”

UPDATE: UCLA has appealed the injunction.

JUST IN: University of California files appeal to 9th Circuit over judge’s injunction barring religious discrimination on UCLA campus and in its programs. Order came in suit charging anti-semitism. Doc: https://t.co/ZqUeqA2sNA https://t.co/v2R4cosFzW

— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) August 15, 2024