Trump administration sues UCLA again over antisemitism

The Trump administration on Tuesday filed its second antisemitism lawsuit against UCLA in four months.

The lawsuit accused the school of taking “no serious action whatsoever” to prevent the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024.

In February, the administration sued UCLA over similar allegations that it ignored antisemitic harassment toward the university’s Jewish employees; that lawsuit cited the same protests as the administration’s latest litigation.

“Universities have an obligation to maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students,” said the first assistant U.S. attorney on the case, Bill Essayli, in a statement. “Universities that violate our nation’s civil rights laws by repeatedly failing to shield Jewish students from antisemitism will be held accountable.”

Both suits against UCLA draw on the work of the university’s own task force, which investigated the rise of antisemitism on campus and produced a lengthy report in 2024. In a similar lawsuit against Harvard University in March, the Justice Department repeatedly cited the findings of Harvard’s internal antisemitism task force.

UCLA’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, denied the administration’s claim that the school was indifferent to the treatment of Jewish students. “Let me be direct: the suggestion that UCLA has been passive in the face of antisemitism is simply wrong,” he said in a statement.

Frenk said that the school has taken several steps to combat antisemitism, such as recruiting an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety, reorganizing the university’s Civil Rights Office, appointing a Title VI officer and updating school policies. This month, the university announced a series of actions meant to combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students on campus.

The government’s latest lawsuit accuses UCLA of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination based on race or national origin in schools receiving federal money. The earlier lawsuit, from February, accuses the university of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination in employment.

The litigation follows a demand last year that UCLA pay a $1 billion fine, among other concessions, to restore cuts to research funding.

The new lawsuit asks a court to rule that the university has been in violation of the law since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and “triggered a wave of antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiment across American college campuses, including at UCLA,” the suit says. It also asks the court to rule that the federal government does not need to make any more scheduled grant payments to UCLA, and that grant payments made while UCLA was in violation of the law be returned to the government.