Becket Law has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the students who claim the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) assisted protesters in barring them from accessing the heart of the campus, including their classes.
"They're trying to claim that our plaintiffs haven't shown any injury -- that they haven't been injured by the encampment, and that UCLA has taken corrective action to prevent these encampments from ever happening again," relays Becket attorney Laura Slavis. "That directly contradicts the evidence that we've submitted in support of our preliminary injunction."
She asserts the perpetrators violated a number of constitutional rights and statutes passed specifically to protect civil rights.
"UCLA has no response to that except to say, 'Well, we can't be held responsible,'" the attorney reports.
The university has disavowed any obligation to protect its Jewish students, claiming it does not share a "special relationship" with the protestors and refusing to acknowledge that the encampments and checkpoints were antisemitic.
For the antisemitism on its own campus, UCLA has also blamed everyone but itself, according to Becket. It blamed the police for the delayed response of "several days." It blamed the victimized Jewish students for being in the "vicinity" of an encampment that was blocking their access to critical campus facilities. For everything else, it blamed the "unidentified activists."
Regents are urging the federal court to reject the lawsuit and maintain they should not be ordered to protect Jewish students when they return to campus.
