Three Jewish University of California Los Angeles students are suing the school for “cowardly” allowing anti-Israel protesters to build a "Jew exclusion zone" open only to those who pledge loyalty to the Palestinian cause.
The lawsuit, filed June 5 by the religious liberty law firm Becket, is the first to challenge a major California university for its response to antisemitic protests of Israel’s war with Hamas, the Free Beacon reported.
The suit alleges one student heading to a class was banned from walking through the encampment, 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 encampment was "shooed away by a security officer who chastised her and called her ‘the problem,’" the suit says.
According to the suit, UCLA administrators knew about the zone — and hired security to monitor it, telling guards to "discourage unapproved students" from crossing the blockade.
"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 complaint names UCLA administrators, including outgoing Chancellor Gene Block, and the UC Board of Regents, which governs the University of California system.
Organized by the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and the UC Divest Coalition at UCLA, protesters took over a campus hub outside the main library and the school’s music hall at the end of April, sparking counterprotests and violence before administrators dispatched police to clear the area a week later.
According to the Free Beacon, UCLA has seen a surge of antisemitic activism since the start of the Israel-Hamas war Oct. 7 — including graffiti on a bathroom wall that urged "Free Palestine, F*** Jews.”