Law enforcement officers detain a demonstrator, as they clear out a pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson

A US federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) must stop allowing pro-Hamas demonstrators to secure an encampment from which Jewish students were barred entry, calling the situation permitted on campus “so unimaginable and so abhorrent.”

Last semester, pro-Hamas groups at UCLA waged for three weeks a campaign aimed at pressuring school officials into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The action culminated in their erecting on the Royce Quad section of campus a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and refusing to vacate the area until their demands were met.

Enabled by UCLA chancellor Gene D. Block, who had the encampment protected by physical barriers and campus police, the area became the site of violent clashes between pro-Hamas and pro-Israel protesters and a zone of nullification in which federal civil rights laws prohibiting the exclusion of individuals based on their racial or religious identity were, according to the judge, flagrantly flouted. Throughout the encampment’s existence, Jewish students were barred from walking near or through the area on their way to class unless they denounced the Zionist component of their Jewish identities, a policy which UCLA police upheld without compunction.

Granting a request for injunctive relief filed by Jewish students who sued the university, US Judge Mark Scarsi of the District Court for the Central District of California grated UCLA’s defense of its role in supporting the encampment — which argued, in his words, that it “has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters” — and described what took place there as “so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.”

He continued, “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.”

Scarsi, who formally assumed office in 2020 after being nominated in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, also affirmed the plaintiffs’ contention that Zionism is an integral part of their Jewish faith. The ruling is the first to address directly how university administrators handled pro-Hamas encampments on their campuses, which, across the country, descended into proclaiming support for terrorism, threatening a genocide of Jews, and unobstructed vandalizing of school property and assault.

“Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” Mark Rienzi — president of the public interest law firm Becket, which represented the plaintiffs — said on Tuesday, praising the decision’s defense of religious liberty. “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.”

A slew of lawsuits filed by Jewish students and against their universities over their handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded Israel and launched the ongoing war in Gaza, have been decided this summer or remain in the courts.

Earlier this month, a Massachusetts federal judge “in part” denied Harvard University a motion to dismiss a suit which accuses it of failing to respond to numerous antisemitic incidents during the 2023-2024 academic year, clearing the case to proceed to trial. Throughout the summer, Columbia University and New York University (NYU) settled two lawsuits, with NYU paying an undisclosed sum of money to avoid further discovery and litigation.

Most recently, North Carolina State University (NCSU) settled a civil rights complaint which accused school officials of declining to discipline anyone involved in a series of antisemitic incidents in which a Jewish student was allegedly bullied, doxxed, and threatened with physical violence.

As part of the settlement, an outcome achieved during an “early” mediation process arbitrated by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the university agreed to update its anti-discrimination policies to adhere to a 2019 Trump administration executive order which recognized anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism, include antisemitism in its programming on racial and ethnic hatred, and hold regular meetings with Jewish organizations on campus. The university will also base its handling of future antisemitic incidents on North Carolina’s Shalom Act (House Bill 942), which explicitly refers to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.