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.
In response to the exclusion of Jewish students from portions of UCLA’s campus, Plaintiffs Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian moved for a preliminary injunction against Defendants Regents of the University of California, Michael V. Drake, Gene D. Block, Darnell Hunt, Michael Beck, Monroe Gorden, Jr., and Rick Braziel (hereinafter, “UCLA”). UCLA opposed, and Plaintiffs filed a reply...
At the hearing, the Court ordered the parties to meet and confer on the terms of a proposed preliminary injunction that would protect Plaintiffs’ rights while allowing UCLA the flexibility needed to administer the UCLA campus. Plaintiffs and UCLA filed separate responses to the order, but were unable to make meaningful ground on a compromise position...
The Court deems this matter appropriate for decision without further oral argument...
UCLA requests a stay of any preliminary injunction pending appeal.., The request is denied for failure to comply with rules governing motion and ex parte practice...
Plaintiffs are three Jewish students who assert they have a religious obligation to support the Jewish state of Israel...*
CONCLUSION
...The Court orders:
1. Defendants Drake, Block, Hunt, Beck, Gordon, and Braziel (“Defendants”) are prohibited from offering any ordinarily available programs, activities, or campus areas to students if Defendants know the ordinarily available programs, activities, or campus areas are not fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.
2. Defendants are prohibited from knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.
3. On or before August 15, 2024, Defendants shall instruct Student Affairs Mitigator/Monitor (“SAM”) and any and all campus security teams (including without limitation UCPD and UCLA Security) that they are not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas.
4. For purposes of this order, all references to the exclusion of Jewish students shall include exclusion of Jewish students based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.
5. Nothing in this order prevents Defendants from excluding Jewish students from ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas pursuant to UCLA code of conduct standards applicable to all UCLA students.
Absent a stay of this injunction by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, this preliminary injunction shall take effect on August 15, 2024, and remain in effect pending trial in this action or further order of this Court or the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: August 13, 2024
MARK C. SCARSI
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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*In its brief, Amicus Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA disputes the facts presented in the complaint and motion papers and asserts, inter alia, that no one “was denied entrance to the Palestinian solidarity encampment based on their identity.” ...This conclusory assertion is in tension with Plaintiffs’ record evidence, which UCLA declined to refute. Further, Amicus’ assertion that no one was excluded from the encampment based on identity does not grapple with an important nuance—that Plaintiffs here assert that supporting the Jewish state of Israel is their sincerely held religious belief.
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