A federal judge ordered the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) on Aug. 13 to stop preventing Jewish students from traversing the campus amid pro-Palestinian protests.
The plaintiffs say they were blocked from certain areas of campus as “anti-Semitic activists” established checkpoints near their encampment, allowing only those who condemned Israel to pass.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi issued a preliminary injunction on Aug. 13, prohibiting UCLA from providing programs and access to buildings if Jewish students were blocked.
“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,” he stated.
Scarsi wrote that UCLA “does not dispute this” and that the university claims that it had “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,” he stated.
The judge ordered UCLA to instruct its student affairs and campus security teams by Aug. 15 that “they are not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas.”
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said the court’s ruling would “improperly hamstring” the university’s ability to respond to incidents.
“We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward,” Osako said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
She reaffirmed UCLA’s commitment to ensuring that all students are “free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment.”
The preliminary injunction marked the first time a court has ruled against a university for “allowing an antisemitic encampment,” according to Becket Law, which represents the students.
Becket Law President Mark Rienzi called on UCLA to protect the rights of its Jewish students.
Yitzchok Frankel, a law student at UCLA and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the judge’s decision.
“No student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish,” Frankel stated. “I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”
UCLA is among the many campuses in the United States where demonstrators have set up encampments to protest the war in Gaza, which was Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that left about 1,200 people dead and more than 250 held hostage.
Jewish students and faculty members at those schools have said that the protests often devolved into hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric and even violence, making them feel unwelcome and unsafe.
