Justice Department sues UCLA for the third time, alleges antisemitism against students

The Trump administration on Tuesday sued the University of California, alleging that UCLA is “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitic harassment of Jewish students, marking the government’s third lawsuit against the UC this year and a sharp escalation of federal civil rights pressure on the nation’s largest public research university system.

The 53-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleges UCLA violated federal civil rights by tolerating a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. The attack prompted Israel’s war in Gaza, which drew widespread student protests and pro-Palestinian encampments in the spring, including one at UCLA that was the site of a violent melee the night of April 30, 2024.

The government is asking the court to force UCLA to repay federal grant money going back more than two years — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — bar it from new federal contracts until it’s deemed in compliance with civil rights law, and install an independent court-appointed monitor that would oversee its civil rights practices. The department is also asking for the court to force reforms to UCLA’s antidiscrimination procedures.

The demands are much narrower than the wide-reaching changes to campus policies and culture the Trump administration sought from UCLA in August 2025, when it unsuccessfully proposed the university pay roughly $1.2 billion to settle allegations of civil rights violations.

The suit centers on the encampment, alleging masked demonstrators “kicked and slapped Jews, beat Jews with sticks, and assaulted Jews with pepper spray.” The Trump administration said UCLA leaders “took no serious action whatsoever” until May 2, 2024, when police cleared the camp.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-26/justice-department-ucla-antisemitism-lawsuit