UCLA pleads for legal immunity for officials in ‘Jew Exclusion Zone’ lawsuit
December 4, 2024
What Jewish students and a professor suing UCLA see as the university’s facilitation of a “Jew Exclusion Zone” – an anti-Israel encampment that required Jews to denounce their historic homeland to pass through campus – UCLA sees as its measured approach this past spring to safely shut down disruptive protests against Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks.
UCLA filed motions for judgment on the pleadings and to dismiss Tuesday on behalf of six current and former administrators, including President Michael Drake and ex-Chancellor Gene Block, arguing the new evidence introduced a month ago by students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum and Eden Shemuelian and professor Kamran Shamsa actually weakens their lawsuit.
The University of California, Los Angeles continues to reject the characterization of its actions by the plaintiffs and the President Trump-nominated judge overseeing the case, Mark Rienzi, who issued an injunction in August that blasted the school for claiming it has “no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.”
He banned the taxpayer-funded university from offering services to some students when it “knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds” and “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students,” through de-escalation “or otherwise.”