UCLA excluding Jews ‘unimaginable, abhorrent,’ per federal judge

“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.”

So begins an Aug. 13 order from Mark Scarsi, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

“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,” Scarsi continued. “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.”

Under principles of the Constitution, the University of California, Los Angeles—a public school—"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 continued.

Scarsi issued a preliminary injunction that requires UCLA to stop providing “ordinarily available programs, activities and campus areas” to the entire student body if they become unavailable to certain Jewish students. “How best to make any unavailable programs, activities and campus areas available again is left to UCLA’s discretion,” he wrote.

Likely future injury

During the week that an anti-Israel encampment was set up on a central part of the UCLA campus, and in subsequent encampments, Jewish students—including the three plaintiffs—felt that they had to “disavow” their religious beliefs to move freely on campus and that they “were excluded based of their genuinely held religious beliefs,” in support of the Jewish state, per the judge’s order.

Scarsi ruled that the plaintiffs have standing, in part because they “have sufficiently shown an imminent likelihood of future injury.” He also wrote that UCLA, when it claims that it is not the source of the injuries to the Jewish students, “misconstrues” that damage.

“The injuries are not simply the exclusion of plaintiffs from certain of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities and campus areas,” Scarsi wrote. “The injuries result when plaintiffs are excluded from certain of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities and campus areas and UCLA still provides those programs, activities and campus areas to other students knowing that plaintiffs and students like them are excluded based on their religious exercise.”

Yitzchok Frankel, an incoming third-year law student at UCLA, stated that “no student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish.”

“I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct,” he added.

“Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” stated Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and a lawyer representing the Jewish students. “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation. UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit, stated that the injunction “is the first in the nation against a university for allowing an antisemitic encampment,” adding that UCLA is expected to appeal the ruling, which would go into effect on Aug. 15, to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I hate to be a broken record on this, but where is the Justice Department?” wrote David Bernstein, university professor of law and director of the Liberty and Law Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, of the case. “The Justice Department literally came into existence to combat conspiracies to violate Americans’ civil rights.”