Justice Department lawsuit says UCLA failed to protect Jewish employees from hostility

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is suing the University of California over allegations that UCLA failed to protect Jewish employees from antisemitic harassment amid pro-Palestinian protests that roiled the campus in 2023 and 2024.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in California, is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to punish top universities that it says have been soft on antisemitism. The suit accuses the University of California, Los Angeles of failing to discipline those who were involved in protests, including dozens who were arrested in 2024 for failing to leave a campus encampment.

Trump officials previously determined that UCLA failed to protect Jewish students, and last year UCLA reached a $6 million settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university. The new lawsuit alleges the harm to Jewish and Israeli employees “goes much deeper” than the situations that settlement addressed.

“The United States will now do what UC has thus far failed to do: protect Jewish and Israeli employees” from antisemitic harassment, said the lawsuit, which was filed against the University of California, which consists of 10 campuses, but focuses on allegations against UCLA.

The University of California referred a request for comment to UCLA, which said Tuesday it has taken “concrete and significant steps” to strengthen campus security, enforce policies and combat antisemitism. It did not mention the federal government's lawsuit.

“Antisemitism is abhorrent and has no place at UCLA or elsewhere,” Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in the statement.

Much of the federal complaint focuses on the 2024 protest encampment that federal officials say blocked Jewish employees and students from parts of campus and included antisemitic signs and chants. One night, counterprotesters attacked the encampment, throwing traffic cones and firing pepper spray, with fighting that continued for hours, injuring more than a dozen people, before police stepped in. The next day, after hundreds defied orders to leave, more than 200 people were arrested.

The 81-page lawsuit alleges UCLA violated its own policies by tolerating the encampment and accuses the university of failing to discipline any students, faculty or staff over antisemitic behavior.

“UCLA’s administration turned a blind eye to — and at times facilitated — grossly antisemitic acts and systematically ignored cries for help from its own terrified Jewish and Israeli employees,” the Justice Department alleges in the lawsuit.

The suit asks a judge to force UCLA to enforce its own anti-discrimination policies and to “award damages,” without specifying an amount, to Jewish employees at UCLA who faced a hostile work environment.

The university has said it has taken numerous steps toward improving campus safety and inclusivity, including the creation of an Office of Campus and Community Safety and new policies to manage protests on campus. UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose Jewish father and grandparents fled to Mexico to escape Nazi Germany and whose wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, launched an initiative to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.

“We stand firmly by the decisive actions we have taken to combat antisemitism in all its forms, and we will vigorously defend our efforts and our unwavering commitment to providing a safe, inclusive environment for all members of our community,” Osako said in the university's statement.

The Trump administration has primarily focused on elite private universities in its campaign to win obedience from campuses it accuses of liberal and antisemitic bias. UCLA is one of the few public universities targeted in that effort.

Last summer, the Trump administration said it was seeking $1 billion from UCLA as part of a settlement to end federal scrutiny. Trump officials had cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from the university, though a federal judge ordered the money to be restored in September. In November, that same judge barred the federal government from fining UCLA. ___ Gecker reported from San Francisco.

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