UCLA settles discrimination lawsuit over 'Jew Exclusion Zone' for $6M | Fox News
By: Louis Casiano (Fox News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
closeVideo
Columbia's $200M settlement is a 'template' for other universities, Education Secretary Linda McMahon reveals
Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke with Fox News Digital about the Trump administration's accountability efforts against antisemitism on college campuses.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Jewish students and faculty members over the school's handling of anti-Israel protests, including allowing protesters to ban Jews from a part of the campus known as a "Jew Exclusion Zone."
The lawsuit was brought last year by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which accused UCLA of "aiding and abetting" an antisemitic culture, including "segregating Jewish students and preventing them from accessing the heart of campus."
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Mary Osako, the UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said the university has taken "concrete action to enhance campus safety by creating a new Office of Campus and Community Safety, instituting new policies to manage protests on campus and taking decisive action for conduct that violates our longstanding policies."
EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA MCMAHON TOUTS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S $200M SETTLEMENT 'TEMPLATE'
More protests and arrests emerged at UCLA May 6, 2024, with police arresting multiple people who gathered in a campus parking garage. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
"Antisemitism has no place at UCLA, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to eradicating it from our community," Osako said. "We have reflected candidly on our progress and are working to expunge antisemitism from our community in its entirety.
"These efforts have been supplemented by our continuing work to eliminate antisemitism completely and definitively through our Initiative to Combat Antisemitism," she added. "This work, and today's settlement, represent an important next step as we build upon our past efforts and stride toward fulfilling our promise of being an exemplary university."
Video
The university agreed to enter into a consent judgment and pay more than $6.13 million to the plaintiffs. A federal judge still needs to give final approval.
In August 2024, a federal judge ordered the school to stop allowing anti-Israel protesters to ban Jews from portions of the school's campus. School officials acknowledged that students had been physically blocked from accessing parts of campus.
UCLA student Eli Tsives on video getting blocked from going to class by what looked like a group of anti-Israel protesters. The school has agreed to pay more than $6 million to settle discrimination complaints brought by Jewish students and faculty. (Credit: Eli Tsives/Facebook)
TRUMP SECURES $221M COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT OVER ALLEGED CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Protesters gather outside an anti-Israel encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles May 1, 2024, in Los Angeles.(Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
"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," a federal court found at the time.
"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."
Yitzchok Frankel, then a third-year law student at UCLA and father of four who said he faced antisemitic harassment for wearing a kippah, was forced to abandon his regular routes through campus because of the Jew Exclusion Zone.
Video
"When antisemites were terrorizing Jews and excluding them from campus, UCLA chose to protect the thugs and help keep Jews out," Frankel said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital by the Becket Fund. "That was shameful, and it is sad that my own school defended those actions for more than a year. But today's court judgment brings justice back to our campus and ensures Jews will be safe and be treated equally once again."
Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students involved in the lawsuit, said campus administrators across the country bent their knees to antisemites as encampments spread across college campuses.
Graffiti at the Powell Library on the UCLA campus, where anti-Israel demonstrators erected an encampment April 29, 2024, in Los Angeles.(Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"They are now on notice: Treating Jews like second-class citizens is wrong, illegal and very costly," he said. "UCLA should be commended for accepting judgment against that misbehavior and setting the precedent that allowing mistreatment of Jews violates the Constitution and civil rights laws. Students across the country are safer for it."
Fox News Digital's Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.
Louis Casiano is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to louis.casiano@fox.com.
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off-topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, respond to themselves, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) you are replying to preserve the continuity of this seed. Any use of MAGA or trump will be deleted, they are not the topic
Tags
Who is online
94 visitors
And to nobodies surprise the third reich comes to life at a state college in a deep blue state.
got off cheap.
Horrible . American Jews are not responsible at all for the actions of the Israeli government.
“Horrible . American Jews are not responsible at all for the actions of the Israeli government.”
i agree, just like whites today are not responsible for the actions of white slave owners 170 or so years ago.
What are whites suffering today that is comparable to Jewish students being restricted in their movements?
Your comment doesnt even make any sense.
You’re in favor of reparations, are you not? You admit that one group of people, American Jews, are not responsible for the actions of another group of people, the israeli government. If you are consistent you’ll admit that a group of people that never owned slaves is not responsible for the actions of people who did.
They're being called "Racist" and having their white privilege eroded by minorities! Oh No!!!
Individual whites are not responsible for what happened 200 years ago, that is true.
Well if that’s all you’ve got,,,,,lol.
So why do you support punishing them on the basis of what happened 200 years ago?
No white people are being punished in America.
I have to admire the way y'all have derailed this seed though.
A word many on the left have watered down to mean essentially nothing.
Do you believe whites as a group today are?
What does the actions of UCLA have to do with the Israeli government?
It’s easier to pretend it’s about Israel rather than reality I guess.
Why were Jews being harassed on the UCLA campus? Did it come up out of the blue or was it related to Gaza?
Okay John, a bunch of Christians were just slaughtered with machetes, so does that make it okay to retaliate against Muslims in Detroit?
How far are you willing to go to justify the lefts final solution when it comes to Jewish people?
Why dont you go and try to strawman someone else. I already said the discrimination against Jewish students at UCLA was horrible.
And then preceded to make excuses for it in you very next comment.
Really? Quote where I made excuses for it [deleted][✘]
Out of the blue?
You know that universities like UCLA teach history from the Marxist perspective IE: Oppressors & the oppressed.
They have indoctrinated a generation into thinking Israel oppressed the Palestinians. It is really simple.
So you're saying Jewish students were not allowed free access to UCLA locations prior to the Gaza war?
Pretty sure that if allowed, the UCLA racists would not have let them even before Oct 7. Oct 7 just gave them an excuse and the university went along with it.
So the school that has violated "longstanding policies" set up an office to bring in new policies. For what? So they can violate them as well?
They're paying $6 million, that will, more than likely, recouped with tuition raises and doing nothing else.
Their endowment is worth approx $7.4 Billion so the $6 Million is just petty change to them. It's meaningless. Perhaps there should be a class action lawsuit against the university, especially if it happens again.
They'll still try to recoup it.
I agree completely. Want to hit them, go for their accreditation.