Trump sues UC for allegedly facilitating ‘grossly antisemitic acts’ on UCLA campus

The Trump administration on Tuesday sued the University of California system over allegations that UCLA officials allowed antisemitism to flourish on campus and impede on the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli faculty and students.

The UCLA campus became a flashpoint in Los Angeles after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, prompting the war in Gaza, which in turn spurred pro-Palestinian activism on campus. A student encampment against the war ended in arrests and violence from counter-protesters on the Westwood campus in 2024.

An independent audit released in November 2024 found that UCLA police and administrators lacked sufficient plans with how to deal with the campus disruptions and were slow to respond and were “more chaotic than they should have been.”

The 81-page lawsuit alleges UCLA officials “turned a blind eye to — and at times facilitated — grossly antisemitic acts and systematically ignored cries for help from its own terrified Jewish and Israeli employees.”

“Based on our investigation, UCLA administrators allegedly allowed virulent anti-Semitism to flourish on campus, harming students and staff alike,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

Mary Osako, UCLA's Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications, said in a statement that as Chancellor Julio Frenk has made clear: "Antisemitism is abhorrent and has no place at UCLA or anywhere."

She pointed to "concrete and significant steps" the university has taken to "strengthen campus safety, enforce policies, and combat antisemitism in a systemic and sustained manner," including reorganizing the Office of Civil Rights and hiring an official to ensure oversight.

"We stand firmly by the decisive actions we have taken to combat antisemitism in all its forms, and we will vigorously defend our efforts and our unwavering commitment to providing a safe, inclusive environment for all members of our community," Osako added.

The faculty union did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, last September, over 200 Jewish faculty members from campuses across the state signed a letter to the UC Board of Regents stating: “Like Jewish people across the country and around the world, we hold various views about Israel and Palestine, U.S. policy in the Middle East and student activism on campus. But we are united in denouncing the federal government’s attempt to hobble the University of California—a bastion of free inquiry, social mobility and essential research—under the cynical and pretextual guise of ‘combating antisemitism.’”

The lawsuit comes months after the Trump administration unsuccessfully demanded a range of concessions to bring UCLA more in line with its ideology, in addition to more than $1 billion in fines. But a series of court rulings curtailed that effort.

In December 2025, ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education published a report showing “the extent to which the government violated legal and procedural norms to gin up its case against the school.” The DOJ’s career attorneys eventually recommended a lawsuit against only UCLA.

Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.