U.S. Judge Mark C. Scarsi slammed the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on Tuesday in a preliminary injunction ordering it to make sure Jewish students can access campus activities — or else cancel all activities.
The order was the latest development in a case in which students sued UCLA to enforce their civil rights, after they were blocked from classes and activities by a large pro-Palestinian “encampment” in the center of campus this spring.
Only students who denounced Zionism — the right of Jews to self-determination in the land of Israel — could pass.
(This author visited the site of the “encampment” in April and was assaulted by the activists at the site, who appeared to have been given full authority to exclude anyone they wished, including the media, by the UCLA administration.)
UCLA responded to the students’ lawsuit by admitting that it had erected metal barricades around the “encampment” but claimed it had done so to prevent the protest from expanding. It said it was not responsible for the discrimination.
In a blistering decision, Judge Scarsi expressed horror that Jewish students had been excluded (original emphasis):
In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions 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 that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.
The judge concluded:
Under the Court’s injunction, UCLA retains flexibility to administer the university. Specifically, the injunction does not mandate any specific policies and procedures UCLA must put in place, nor does it dictate any specific acts UCLA must take in response to campus protests. Rather, the injunction requires only that, if any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students. How best to make any unavailable programs, activities, and campus areas available again is left to UCLA’s discretion.
Judge Scarsi denied UCLA’s request for a stay on his order, but allowed for the possibility of appeal to the Ninth Circuit by Thursday, August 15.
Read the full decision here.
UCLA Vice Chancellor Mary Osako complained about the ruling, as the Times of Israel notes, saying it “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.”
Judge Scarsi was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump and confirmed in 2020.
The case is Frankel v. Regents of the University of California, in the Central District of California Western Division – Los Angeles, No. 2:24-CV-4702-MCS.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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