LOS ANGELES (BP) – The University of California at Los Angeles blocked Jewish students from portions of campus when protests erupted in response to the Israel-Hamas War, a district judge has ruled, citing their faith as the sole factor.
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi said in granting a preliminary injunction Aug. 13 in the lawsuit filed by three Jewish students against the school. “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 didn’t dispute the incident, Scarsi wrote in his injunction, but rather claimed no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of the plaintiffs because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.
“But under constitutional principles,” Scarsi wrote, “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.”
Mark Rienzi, president of Becket Law and an attorney for the plaintiffs, praised the judge’s preliminary injunction, which required UCLA to provide remedies for such situations almost immediately, on or before Aug. 15.
“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,” Rienzi tweeted on X when the injunction was issued. “UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”
The case, Yitzchok Frankel et al v. Regents of the University of California et al, stems from April when more than a thousand pro-Palestinian protestors began establishing encampments deemed “Jew exclusion zones” on UCLA’s campus.
Protestors established checkpoints and would not allow students to pass through the encampments unless they disavowed Israel’s statehood, alienating Jewish students and blocking their free access and egress of necessary routes. UCLA ordered campus police not to disturb the encampments for a week, Becket law said in its complaint filed against the university on behalf of the Jewish students.
“The encampment led UCLA to effectively make certain of its programs, activities, and campus areas available to other students when UCLA knew that some Jewish students, including plaintiffs, were excluded based on their genuinely held religious beliefs,” Scarsi wrote.
The encampments were among protests on several college campuses across the nation and are part of a rise in antisemitism seen nationally and globally. The protests have led to the resignations of several college presidents over their handling of the unrest, most recently Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who resigned Aug. 13.
Messengers to the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting said they were “appalled by anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activities on university campuses, within professional associations, and in the culture at large,” as one of several tenets in the resolution “On Justice and Peace in the Aftermath of the October 7 Attack on Israel.”
In the injunction, Scarsi prohibited UCLA from offering programs to some students that “are not fully and equally accessible to Jewish students;” and prevented the school from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”
The order doesn’t prevent UCLA from closing services to Jewish students that are also closed to other students, Scarsi said.
Frankel, a UCLA law student, expressed appreciation for the ruling.
“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.”
But UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako told the Associated Press the ruling “would improperly hamstring” the school’s “ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.” She said UCLA is considering all available options moving forward, and is committed to fostering a welcoming community free of “intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” the AP reported.