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‘So unimaginable and so abhorrent’: UCLA case is a reminder of how bigotry resurfaces

Written by William C. Duncan

August 23, 2024

  • A recent federal court decision addressed whether a California university could allow some students to be excluded from parts of campus by protesters simply because the students were Jewish.
  • The court ordered the school to ensure access to all parts of campus regardless of a student’s religious exercise.
  • The First Amendment prohibits any government agency from providing a benefit from which people of faith are excluded.

​As surprising as it may be for attorneys to hear, legal writing is not typically considered a compelling genre. A recent decision from the U.S. District Court from the Central District of California provides a counterexample. Here’s how the opinion begins:

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.

The startling facts of this case are a stark reminder that religious and other bigotry has not been banished and can come to the fore under circumstances where politically motivated hatred is tolerated or even encouraged.

The case came about in the context of campus protests following the October 2023 terrorist attacks on Israel. As the Becket Fund, which represents Jewish students in the case, explains, protesters barricaded a portion of campus and “refused to let students through unless they disavowed Israel’s right to exist.” This meant that “Jewish students and faculty with religious and ethnic obligations not to condemn Israel” could not access parts of campus, “including the campus’s most popular undergraduate library and classroom buildings.” Protesters “used checkpoints, built barriers, and often locked arms to prevent Jews from walking through the encampment. They also created an identification system, giving wristbands to those who had passed their anti-Israel ideological test and preventing those without one from entering.”

The administration of UCLA “failed to clear the Jew Exclusion Zone and instead ordered campus police to stand down and allow the illegal encampment to stay. The administration even stationed security staff around the encampment to keep students unapproved by the protestors [sic] out of the area.”

The university has argued that it “has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.”

On Aug. 13, the court issued an injunction ordering the school to stop knowingly allowing Jewish students to be excluded from campus programs and locations “because of their genuinely held religious beliefs.” It also ordered the school to instruct campus 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.”

The court explained that the constitutional problem with the university allowing limitations on Jewish students access to campus projects and areas is that doing so creates a situation where some students are treated differently from others “based on their religious exercise.” As a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made clear, when an agency of the government provides benefits to one group but excludes others because of their religious practice, that law is unconstitutional. Here, UCLA allows student access to libraries, classrooms, and other parts of campus and the associated services while standing by as some students were excluded because of those students’ religious beliefs about Israel.

The alarmed tone of the court’s ruling is certainly appropriate. It is completely contrary to our constitutional system that Jewish students can be excluded from access to parts of a campus because of their beliefs. UCLA can appeal this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but it would be wise to instead make a serious effort to protect the access of all students to all parts of campus regardless of their religious beliefs.

More important than the outcome of a particular case is the reminder that the religious and political bigotry that leads to atrocities is not confined to the past. It can emerge whenever we are not honest enough to recognize that it is taking root and diligent enough to develop the qualities and practices that can prevent us from succumbing.

Insights: analysis, research, and informed commentary from Sutherland experts. For elected officials and public policy professionals.

  • A recent federal court decision addressed whether a California university could allow some students to be excluded from parts of campus by protesters simply because the students were Jewish.
  • The court ordered the school to ensure access to all parts of campus regardless of a student’s religious exercise.
  • The First Amendment prohibits any government agency from providing a benefit from which people of faith are excluded.
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