A federal judge has sided with three Jewish students in a case brought against UCLA. The case stems from the situation on campus in the spring when large numbers of pro-Palestinian protesters attempted to control who was allowed to cross through the campus by setting up Zionist check points.

Protests erupted on campus in late April to early May in which pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment in the center of campus and put up barricades. 

The complaint alleged the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protester view were issued a wristband to allow them to pass through, the complaint said, which effectively barred access to Jewish students that supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi sided with the three students, and rebuked the school...

The filing said that when the protests broke out on campus, the three Jewish students stopped passing through major quads and courtyards on campus including Powell Library, because it meant traversing the encampment and “carried a risk of violence.”

The existence of these checkpoints is not contested. There were reports about this in the LA Times back in May.

Eilon Presman was about 100 feet from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”

The 20-year-old junior, who is Israeli, realized the activists were pointing at him.

“Human chain!” they cried.

A line of protesters linked arms and marched toward him, Presman said, blocking him from accessing the heart of UCLA’s campus. Other activists, he said, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to block his view of the camp.

“Every step back that I took, they took a step forward,” Presman said. “I was just forced to walk away.”

As the pro-Palestinian protesters saw it, excluding Zionists from the center of campus was about preserving their own safety, i.e. preventing them from having to hear any criticism by students who might disagree. They turned the campus into their own safe space for special snowflakes.

Judge Scarsi noted that UCLA didn't dispute what had happened on campus, rather it tried to claim it wasn't responsible for the actions taken by students. He clearly didn't buy into that argument, saying instead that if UCLA knew it was happening the school could not allow what amounted in some cases to illegal religious discrimination.

“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,” Scarsi wrote.

“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,” Scarsi wrote. “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.”

This decision is just a preliminary injunction designed to ensure similar checkpoints don't arise this fall as students return to school. Still, one of the students who filed the complaint expressed gratitude for the decision.

“No student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish,” said Frankel, who will be a third-year law student this fall semester. “I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”

Earlier this week a different judge ruled that a lawsuit against Harvard for its indifference to the treatment of Jewish students on campus could proceed. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns wrote, "Harvard’s reaction was, at best, indecisive, vacillating, and at times intentionally contradictory."

Hopefully other schools will keep all of this in mind as student activists return to campus over the next few weeks.