Feds file second case against UC over handling of anti-Israel protests

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed a second lawsuit against the Regents of the University of California over its handling of the anti-Israel protests on the UCLA campus during the war in Gaza.

While the Trump administration accused the university in a February lawsuit of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by failing to prevent the harassment of its Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff, in its new complaint, the Justice Department claims UC has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by tolerating the harassment and exclusion of Jewish and Israeli students.

“Universities have an obligation to maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “Universities that violate our nation’s civil rights laws by repeatedly failing to shield Jewish students from antisemitism will be held accountable.”

The claims that pro-Palestinian protesters excluded Jewish students from parts of the campus mirror those brought by UCLA students in 2024.

Their claims pertained to an encampment protesters had set up in Royce Quad — at the heart of the sprawling campus in Westwood — where activists created a “Jew exclusion zone” with checkpoints where students needed to denounce Israel as a genocidal state unlawfully occupying Palestine if they wanted to pass through.

“Although UCLA knew that its Jewish and Israeli students risked physical assault when attempting to go to class or the library, UCLA inexplicably took no serious action**whatsoeveruntil May 2, 2024, when it finally allowed police to clear the encampment,” the Justice Department says in the complaint.

Protests erupted at university campuses across the U.S. and around the world when Israel, in retaliation for the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, launched an assault on Gaza that over a two-and-a-half-year period ended up leaving as many as 72,000 Palestinians dead.

The Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza also caused a surge in reported antisemitic incidents in many countries.

In an Oct. 16, 2024, report, the task force UCLA set up to combat antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on the campus found that “campus officials continued to refuse to break up the encampment even after the protesters denied Jews and others free passage and access to campus classrooms and facilities on grounds that allowance of such behaviors and activities was part of their ‘de-escalation strategy.’”

UCLA administrators, according to the task force, were reluctant to take action against those in the encampment unless violence erupted. While the UCLA Police Department chief had advised campus leadership, from the beginning, not to allow the encampment since it violated campus rules against overnight camping, and he feared it could lead to problems, university leadership decided to allow it “as an expression of students’ First Amendment rights,” the task force said in the report.

“Let me be direct: the suggestion that UCLA has been passive in the face of antisemitism is simply wrong," Chancellor Julio Frenk said in response to the new lawsuit. “Combating antisemitism is a moral imperative — one rooted, for me, in personal history that makes indifference unthinkable.”

Frenk pointed to what he said were numerous concrete actions taken in the last year alone to combat antisemitism, including the recruitment of an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety, the reorganization of UCLA’s Civil Rights Office and the appointment of a Title VI officer.

The Justice Department accuses the UC Regents of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, and of breach of contract for violating the terms of the federal grants the university receives insofar as these require the university to comply with Title VI.

The government seeks a permanent injunction to ensure UCLA won’t permit harassment of and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students. The Justice Department also asks the court to rescind and award restitution of all grant payments made to UCLA during the time of the university’s noncompliance with Title VI.

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