Judge rules UCLA can't allow pro-Palestine protesters to bar Jewish students from campus

LOS ANGELES - Months after the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, was home to violent clashing protests between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, saying that the university cannot allow pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students from parts of campus, including classes.

The decision is the first time a U.S. judge has ruled against a university over the demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in June by three UCLA students who claim their civil rights were violated after protesters at encampments across campus allegedly barred Jewish students from portions of the campus like Royce Quad and Powell Library. Though not named in the lawsuit, Eli Tsives was a first-year student at UCLA when the encampments were in place in April and May. In a now-viral social media post, Tsives shared a video of protesters blocking him and other Jewish students from their classes.

"I feel more comfortable going into this next quarter with the ruling," said Tsives.

Tsives' video posted in April gained hundreds of thousands of views.

"These protesters can no longer block Jewish students from entering certain parts of campus," he said Wednesday. "If they do, it’s no longer just a matter [of it being] against the UCLA code of conduct, it’s a legal matter."

PREV. COVERAGE: Jewish UCLA student said protesters blocked him from walking to class

The encampment was broken up in early May, but not until demonstrators from both sides got into violent conflicts, leading to several arrests. UCLA came under fire for what many said was a slow police response to the attacks. John Thomas, then the UCLA Police Chief, was reassigned shortly after.

In the injunction filed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi called the blocking of students from part of campus "unimaginable and so abhorrent."

"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," Scarsi wrote. "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."

FOX 11 spoke with attorney Mark Rienzi on Wednesday, who represents the three Jewish UCLA students involved in the lawsuit.

"This is the first case to get to this kind of ruling," said Rienzi. "Where the judge says what the university did violated the constitution."

Rienzi believes the judge’s order will impact college campuses across the country during future protests.

"Every school in the country is seeing this and so every school in the country now knows, if you allow this to happen to the Jews on the campus, you’re violating civil rights laws," said Rienzi.

In a statement to FOX 11, Mary Osako, UCLA's vice chancellor for strategic communications, said "the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward."

Barring a stay of the injunction from a higher court, it will go into effect on August 15, 2024.

The full injunction can be read below:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.