Judge rules with Jewish students, says UCLA cannot allow them to be blocked from campus after protests

A federal judge on Tuesday issued an injunction against the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles, saying the school cannot allow Jewish students to be barred from classes and campuses.

The ruling is the first of its kind against a university related to the anti-Israel protests that roiled American college campuses this year.

Three Jewish students filed a complaint against UCLA regents in June, saying the university had turned into a “hotbed of anti-Semitism” after the Israel-Hamas war and that the school had failed to ensure Jewish students’ safety and access total to the campus. facilities.

Protests erupted on campus between late April and early May, when pro-Palestinian protesters set up a camp in the center of the campus and erected barricades.

The complaint alleged that protesters created a “Jewish Exclusion Zone,” where, to pass, “a person had to make a statement pledging loyalty to the activists’ vision.” Those who complied with the protesters’ views were given a wristband to allow them passage, the complaint said, which effectively barred access to Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the center of the campus.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi sided with the three students and reprimanded the school.

“Jewish students were excluded from parts of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom,” he wrote.

The lawsuit said that when protests erupted on campus, the three Jewish students stopped passing through the campus’ main courtyards and courtyards, including Powell Library, because doing so meant crossing the camp and “risked violence.”

Ultimately, these protests were suppressed by authorities.

“If any portion of UCLA’s normally available programs, activities, and campus areas becomes unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must cease providing those normally available programs, activities, and campus areas to any student,” Scarsi wrote.

How to handle making these programs available and accessing them again is up to UCLA, he added.

As a result, UCLA regents are prohibited from offering programs, activities, or access to the campus if the defendants know they are not “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.”

The lawsuit noted that the exclusion of Jewish students includes the exclusion of Jewish students based on religious beliefs relating to the Jewish state of Israel.

UCLA said it took corrective action after the camp, including creating a new Office of Campus Security and “transferring day-to-day responsibility for campus security to an Emergency Operations Center,” the document said. However, Scarsi said the changes “do not minimize the risk that Claimants ‘will again be wronged.’”

NBC News has reached out to UCLA for comment on the decision.

UCLA spokeswoman Mary Osako said The Associated Press that the decision “would unduly harm our ability to respond to events on the ground and meet the needs of the Bruin community.”

“UCLA is committed to promoting a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from bullying, discrimination and harassment,” Osako said.