In what it calls a stunning about-face, Becket has announced UCLA has agreed to a $6 million court settlement to end the one-year lawsuit Frankel v. Regents of the University of Southern California.
In the lawsuit, which was filed a year ago this month, Becket represents several Jewish plaintiffs including university students and faculty. The lead plaintiff is Yitzchok Frankel, a UCLA Law graduate.
“When antisemites were terrorizing Jews and excluding them from campus, UCLA chose to protect the thugs and help keep Jews out,” he said in a statement.
Under the settlement, UCLA agreed to honor a federal judge’s court order from 2024. That scathing order from U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi prohibits the university from allowing students and faculty to block and exclude fellow students and faculty from areas of the campus.
“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,” the judge wrote in his preliminary injunction against UCLA.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit called the sprawling encampment a “Jew Exclusion Zone” because anti-Israel activists controlled the area and refused access if people refused to disavow Israel’s war in Gaza.
Back in 2024, when AFN reported on the Becket lawsuit, UCLA leaders were blaming police for a delayed response and blaming Jewish students for being in the “vicinity” of the encampment.
Despite those claims, a task force organized by UCLA said the university helped the encampment with metal barriers and campus security. The university engaged in “de facto or structural antisemitism” and violated the First Amendment rights of Jewish students, the task force concluded.
Asked by AFN why UCLA caved, Becket attorney Daniel Chen says the university saw the writing on the wall from Judge Scarsi’s injunction.
“And just saw, increasingly, it was going to prove fruitless to continue fighting,” he says.
Another part of the settlement includes a $320,000 payment to a UCLA program, Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, which the university launched in March.
