Three Jewish UCLA students are suing the university for allowing anti-Israel protesters to construct a “Jew Exclusion Zone” accessible only to those who pledged fealty to the Palestinian cause.
Three Jewish UCLA students are suing the university for allowing anti-Israel protesters to construct a “Jew Exclusion Zone” accessible only to those who pledged fealty to the Palestinian cause.
The plaintiffs were prohibited from passing through what the lawsuit calls the “Jew Exclusion Zone,” the complaint alleges. One was barred from walking through the encampment to attend class, while another was “harassed and blocked from approaching the encampment by anti-Semitic activists, all with the assistance of UCLA security.” A second-year law student who tried to observe the camp was “shooed away by a security officer who chastised her and called her ‘the problem,’” the lawsuit says.
Although UCLA administrators knew this was happening and even hired security to monitor the protesters’ encampment, they told security guards to “discourage unapproved students” from trying to cross the blockade instead of enforcing equal and free campus access for all and the university’s own policies, the lawsuit alleges.
“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,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the religious liberty law firm Becket and backed by prominent lawyers including former solicitor general Paul Clement, is the first to challenge a major California university for its handling of anti-Semitic protests that have swept public and private campuses alike in the state. The complaint names both UCLA administrators, including outgoing chancellor Gene Block, and the UC Board of Regents which governs the entire University of California system.
UCLA and the UC Board of Regents did not respond to requests for comment.
