Three Jewish students at UCLA filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the president of the University of California and the university’s leadership over the controversial pro-Palestinian encampment that appeared on campus in April and May.
The 74-page complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, alleged that the camp blocked Jewish students and teachers from going to classes, offices and the library and subjected them to chants of anti-Semitic language.
Becket, a nonprofit organization specializing in religious rights, and the law firm Clement & Murphy, PLLC filed the lawsuit on behalf of two law students and a college student.
“If masked agitators had excluded every other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor Newsom would rightly have immediately sent in the National Guard,” said Mark Rienzi, president of the nonprofit.
Rienzi claimed that UCLA capitulated to the demonstrators and “allowed Jewish students to be separated from the heart of their own campus.”
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that the activists used barriers and physically blocked students from entering unless they made a declaration of allegiance to the activists’ positions, received an “endorsement” from a member of the encampment and disavowed Israel.
(credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The complaint alleges that protesters handed out wristbands and “other forms of identification” to people who passed the checkpoint.
The students’ lawyers called the area a “Jew Exclusion Zone.”
“This is America in 2024 – not Germany in 1939,” Rienzi said. “UCLAs administration must answer for allowing the Jewish exclusion zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.”
The students also allege in the lawsuit that security guards hired to strengthen security outside the encampment discouraged Jewish students from crossing the area, the lawsuit alleges.
“The security officers, acting as agents of defendants, informed Jewish individuals that if they wished to gain access to the encampment or other restricted areas, they must first obtain permission from members of the camp,” the lawyers stated in the complaint.
The students are asking for “compensatory, punitive and nominal damages for the loss of their rights under federal-state law” and to cover attorneys’ fees and other costs.
UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
