Three Jewish students at UCLA yesterday filed a civil rights lawsuit in a California federal district court alleging that the University, by tolerating widespread antisemitic behavior, has violated a lengthy list of state and federal statutory and constitutional provisions. The complaint (full text) alleges in part:
1. The University of California, Los Angeles ..., has deteriorated into a hotbed of antisemitism. This rampant anti-Jewish environment burst into view on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel....
2. In the wake of these horrifying events, UCLA should have taken steps to ensure that its Jewish students were safe and protected from harassment and undeterred in obtaining full access to campus facilities. Instead, UCLA officials routinely turned their backs on Jewish students, aiding and abetting a culture that has allowed calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people, Nazi symbolism, and religious slurs to go unchecked....
4. Starting on April 25, 2024, and continuing until May 2, 2024, UCLA allowed a group of activists to set up barricades in the center of campus and establish an encampment that blocked access to critical educational infrastructure on campus....
6. With the knowledge and acquiescence of UCLA officials, the activists enforced what was effectively a “Jew Exclusion Zone,” segregating Jewish students and preventing them from accessing the heart of campus, including classroom buildings and the main undergraduate library....
11. Yet even as the activists continued to enforce the Jew Exclusion Zone, Defendants not only failed to marshal resources to intervene— they adopted a policy facilitating the Jew Exclusion Zone.....
19. The administration’s cowardly abdication of its duty to ensure unfettered access to UCLA’s educational opportunities and to protect the Jewish community is not only immoral—it is illegal.
20. Specifically, it violates numerous federal and state constitutional guarantees, including the Equal Protection Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and the freedom of speech.
21. And it contravenes the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding, as well as numerous other statutory guarantees of equality and fair treatment.
Fox 11 reports on the lawsuit. Becket Fund issued a press release announcing the filing of the suit.
