Frankel v. Regents of the University of California

UCLA’s exclusion of Jews

In the months following the terrorist attacks on Israel in October of 2023, pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish protests emerged throughout the country, most notably on college campuses. In spring 2024, extremist students and outside agitators at UCLA set up barricades in the most popular area of campus and established an encampment in violation of the school’s policies.  

Those agitators refused to let students through unless they disavowed Israel’s right to exist. The effect of this encampment was to segregate Jewish students and faculty with religious and ethnic obligations not to condemn Israel, preventing them from accessing the encampment and other parts of campus, including the campus’s most popular undergraduate library and classroom buildings. The activists used checkpoints, built barriers, and often locked arms to prevent Jews from walking through the encampment.  They also created an identification system, giving wristbands to those who had passed their anti-Israel ideological test and preventing those without one from entering. 

For a full week, UCLA’s administration failed to clear the Jew Exclusion Zone and instead ordered campus police to stand down and allow the illegal encampment to stay. The administration even stationed security staff around the encampment to keep students unapproved by the protestors out of the area. Even after the first encampment was cleared, activists have continued to stage encampments and occupations of public spaces at UCLA.  

Jewish students and faculty harassed, intimidated, and assaulted 

Agitators within the encampments have viciously targeted Jewish students and faculty. Yitzchok Frankel, a law student and father of four, faced antisemitic harassment and was forced to abandon his regular routes through campus because of the Jew Exclusion Zone. Joshua Ghayoum, a sophomore and history major, was repeatedly blocked from attending classes, meetings, and study sessions. He also heard chants at the encampment like “death to Israel” and “death to Jews.” Eden Shemuelian, another law student, had her final exam studies severely compromised when she was forced to walk around the encampment to access the law school and forced to endure antisemitic chants rising from the Jew Exclusion Zone as she studied. Dr. Shamsa, a cardiologist and faculty member at UCLA’s medical school, was shoved to the ground by activists and stopped from accessing public parts of campus by UCLA security. These students and faculty were hardly alone; many other Jews were assaulted by antisemitic agitators. 

Even after UCLA’s belated decision to disband the initial encampment, agitators continued to erect encampments replete with anti-Semitic imagery and, in one case, an attack on a campus rabbi. 

UCLA taken to court over Jew Exclusion Zone  

With the help of Becket and Clement & Murphy, PLLC, the students filed a federal lawsuit against UCLA on June 5, 2024. Becket asked the court to hold UCLA accountable for enabling the Jew Exclusion Zone and other encampments and to ensure that no such encampment exists on campus in the future.   

On July 29, 2024, the federal court heard oral arguments in the case. On August 13, the court ordered UCLA to protect its Jewish students and allow them to access all parts of campus, saying that the previous exclusion of Jewish students from parts of the UCLA campus is “unimaginable” and “abhorrent.” On October 22, the three UCLA Jewish students, joined by a Jewish UCLA professor, filed an amended complaint. It highlights UCLA’s continued failure to stop antisemitism on campus and describes how student groups have responded to the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, with one student group even memorializing the October 7 massacre.  

The complaint also mentions a report by UCLA’s own antisemitism task force, which sharply criticizes the university for its antisemitic actions and environment. The report, which surveyed 428 members of UCLA’s Jewish community, details the systematic exclusion of Jews from UCLA’s campus and documents over 100 reports of individuals who were physically attacked or threatened. The task force noted that it was “troubled by the defense that was offered by the university” in this case and urged the university to stop fighting it: “Jews and Israelis have been victims of discrimination and harassment on the UCLA campus, and the University should commit to remediation, rather than fighting the case.”  

UCLA boasts of its commitment to diversity and its welcoming campus environment. But it has failed miserably to live up to those ideals when it comes to the Jewish members of its community. No person should have to fear for their safety when walking around any public space or pass a religious test to access any public area, let alone on the campus of a prominent American university.

Importance to religious liberty:

• Education: Students don’t give up their rights when they attend a public college. Establishments of higher education are meant to ensure that all students have equal access to campus and receive equal protection under the law.   

• Free Speech: Free speech includes the right to a free and peaceful exchange of ideas with others—including religious ideas. It also prevents the government from forcing individuals to parrot approved opinions. Freedom of speech and religious liberty go hand-in-hand; protecting one protects the other. 

• Public Square: Religion is a natural part of human culture and should not be scrubbed from the public square. This includes public university campuses, which are reflections of the students who attend them and the taxpayers who support them, including religious students and taxpayers.