Judge issues temporary injunction in case of exclusion of Jewish students from campus facilities during protests against war in Gaza

A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order against the University of California Board of Governors, requiring the university administration to close a campus facility that is off-limits to Jewish students to all students. The lawsuit alleges that the university administration failed to protect the right of Jewish students at UCLA to full access to campus facilities during the spring protests against the Gaza war, when pro-Palestinian students gained control of certain areas of the campus and, according to reports, “people who supported the existence of the State of Israel were barred from staying at the camp.”

The court described the shocking scene and its legal conclusions in the opening paragraph of its opinion:

In 2024, in the United States of America, in the state of California, in the city of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from parts of the UCLA campus for refusing to renounce their faith. This fact is … unimaginable and … violates our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom … . UCLA claims it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was orchestrated by third-party protesters. But according to constitutional principles, UCLA may deny some students access to religious services if it knows that other students will be excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who orchestrated the exclusion.

The court explained that the plaintiffs – Jewish students who felt they had to abandon their faith if they wanted to cross the camp to attend certain classes or even gain access to the library – were harmed not only by their exclusion from areas of the campus, but more importantly by the fact that the university continued to provide those services to other students who were freely permitted to enter. Such a discrepancy “raises serious questions about the merits of their claim to free exercise of religion.” Citing recent U.S. Supreme Court cases (such as Trinity Lutheran And Carson against Makin), the Court emphasized that “a state violates the religious freedom clause when it excludes adherents of a religion from otherwise available public services.”

State officials argued that they should have wide discretion in enforcing safety measures and that changes to their policies and procedures meant that the plaintiffs were unlikely to be harmed in the future. However, the court reasoned that new protests and encampments were likely to occur during the fall semester and narrowly framed the injunction to protect school officials' ability to maintain order up to a point:

[T]The order does not prescribe specific policies and procedures that UCLA must implement, nor does it prescribe specific actions that UCLA must take in response to protests on campus. Rather, the order requires only that when portions of UCLA's normally available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must cease offering those normally available programs, activities, and campus areas to all students. How best to make the unavailable programs, activities, and campus areas available again will be at UCLA's discretion.

You can read the commentary here. Stay tuned as school starts back up across the country.