A federal judge on Monday told UCLA and Jewish students suing the university that they have one week to come up with a court-enforceable plan that would guarantee equal access to campus for all if protests over the war between Israel and Hamas or other disruptions break out in the future.
The directive, issued during a hearing in downtown Los Angeles, followed a lawsuit that three Jewish students filed last month against UCLA alleging that a pro-Palestinian encampment in April violated their civil rights by illegally blocking them and other Jews from parts of the campus, including the encampment site, Royce Quad.
“Get together and confer to see if you can come up with an acceptable court stipulation or some other court order that gives UCLA the flexibility it needs … but also gives Jewish students on campus some assurance that their free exercise rights are not going to take a backseat to anything else,” said U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi.
Both sides have until Monday to submit the plan. Scarsi said he will likely issue a court order sometime next week.
The directive marks the first federal court intervention in relation to the UCLA encampment after a volatile spring of divisive pro-Palestine protests. It comes after University of California regents and campus leaders signaled they will no longer tolerate the encampments and will enforce rules regarding protests.
UC President Michael V. Drake is working with UC leaders to come up with a systemwide plan that would allow all campuses to agree on how to handle violations of rules around free speech activities. State lawmakers are withholding $25 million in state funding until Drake submits a report on those measures by Oct. 1.
Student activists at UCLA set up the encampment on April 25, one of the largest and most controversial to have emerged on American campuses. A violent mob attacked it on April 30 amid a belated police intervention. Police dismantled the encampment two days later and arrested about 210 people.
In the lawsuit, three UCLA law and undergraduate students said the university helped enforce a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” by erecting bicycle barriers around the camp and hiring security guards who allowed pro-Palestinian protesters to cross into the camp but blocked Jewish students.
UCLA lawyers said it was student protesters, not the university, that blocked access and that campus security did not discriminate against Jewish students. The university said it blocked off the encampment to prevent it from growing and that its plan was to de-escalate tensions to prevent violence before determining it was necessary to call police.
Outside of the lawsuit, pro-Palestinian student and faculty activists have drawn a distinction, saying the camp was anti-Zionist but not anti-Jewish and that many protesters were Jewish. But for many other Jews, Zionism — the belief in a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish homeland — is a key part of Jewish identity.
The Jewish students, represented by attorneys from the nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asked Scarsi to issue an injunction preventing UCLA from enforcing “policies in a manner that gives Jewish students less than full and equal access” to campus, such as during potential fall protests as the war between Israel and Hamas approaches its first anniversary. They said UCLA is legally obligated to ensure all students access to campus, and it failed to do so for Jewish students.
UCLA said in filings and during Monday's hearing that the issue was moot.
Their lawyers argued that since April, the university had shut down several encampments on the same day they were set up and had developed a strict intolerance toward protests that violated university rules, such as overnight camping.
The university has created a new campus security office and hired a new police chief in response to the spring missteps. UCLA attorneys acknowledged that the university must comply with federal law that bars it from discriminating against Jewish students or students from other religious or ethnic groups.
At Monday’s hearing, Scarsi was sympathetic to the Jewish students’ concerns but hesitated to order UCLA to protect campus access in the specific way the students’ attorneys requested. Instead, Scarsi said he was leaning toward issuing an order requiring UCLA to guarantee campus access to all groups, including Jews.
Scarsi asked both parties to meet and propose an agreed text for the court order.
In an interview after the hearing, Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of the Becket Fund, said he was pleased with the outcome. “We asked for an injunction and the judge said he is in favor of one after we talked to UCLA,” Rienzi said. “We need an injunction so that Jewish students can be protected.”
Although the lawsuit names UC regents and Drake, a UC spokeswoman directed the Times to UCLA for comment.
“UCLA is committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive campus, holding accountable those who have engaged in violence, and combating anti-Semitism in all its forms,” Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice provost for strategic communications, said in a statement. “We have applied the lessons learned from this spring’s protests and continue to work to foster a campus culture where all feel welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination and harassment.”
UC has had to deal with the fallout from pro-Palestine protests across its campuses. Activism remained peaceful on some campuses and protests were suppressed without arrests, while others, most notably at UCLA, saw arrests and violence. The university system has faced calls to respond aggressively to future protests.
“Looking ahead, in close collaboration with UC’s chancellors, President Drake will focus on learning from what has occurred over the past several months and ensuring that we have greater consistency across the system in how key policies are implemented and enforced,” the president’s office said in a statement to The Times last month.
