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Federal Judge Orders UCLA to Ensure Equal Campus Access to Jewish Students after Pro-Palestinian Protests

(Los Angeles Times) Jaweed Kaleem - U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi on Tuesday admonished UCLA for its handling of pro-Palestinian encampments and ordered the university to ensure equal access to Jewish students, three of whom alleged in a lawsuit that the university helped to enforce a "Jew Exclusion Zone" on campus and hired security guards who allowed protesters to cross into the encampment, but not Jewish students. "In the year 2024...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," Scarsi wrote. "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." The judge's order gives UCLA until Thursday to instruct UCLA police, security and student affairs that "they are not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas."
2024-08-15 00:00:00
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