Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto announced Friday that her office declined to file most criminal charges against student protesters. The city attorney’s office received over 300 referrals from arrests made during the mass protests related to the Israel-Hamas War on USC and UCLA campuses last spring, according to a statement on the city attorney’s website.
A majority of the cases were declined due to evidentiary reasons or the universities’ lack of assistance in providing information needed for prosecution, according to the attorney’s statement. The 93 referrals from protest-related arrests on USC’s campus all occurred from the April 24, 2024 mass protest. Each of these was declined on the basis of insufficient evidence.
The city attorney received nine referrals for criminal conduct on USC and UCLA’s campuses separate from protesting. The city attorney made different decisions for these arrests, which Feldstein Soto’s website says “compromised the safety of other individuals or the public.” Four were declined for insufficient evidence; however, three were referred to a city attorney hearing. Two of those hearings involve USC students. Two referrals, both from UCLA’s campus, led to the filing of criminal charges.
The two USC students and one UCLA student referred to a city attorney hearing will face an informal pre-filing diversion proceeding, as an “alternative to a misdemeanor criminal prosecution,” according to the city attorney’s statement.
“We cooperated fully with the City Attorney Office’s investigation to the extent permitted by law. While prosecutorial decisions lie with the City Attorney’s Office, USC followed all of our established policies and processes in this matter and imposed discipline where appropriate,” USC said in a statement to Annenberg Media.
These decisions come over a year after the protest-related arrests at USC. However, protests related to the Israel-Hamas War have continued at the University Park campus. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) and other student organizations hosted a “Blockade + Boycott” protest at the USC Village on Friday.
A student involved with SJP said that the university has still suppressed students’ freedom of speech and refuses to acknowledge the ongoing “genocide” of Palestinians.
“USC may not have pressed charges, but they still swiftly arrested students for their free speech. They still called LAPD to brutalize their own students. They still reigned disciplinary hearings on those students for months to come. They still withheld diplomas and enforced needless security restrictions,” the student said. “That is USC’s legacy.”
Other university administrators have supported the city attorney’s decision not to press charges.
“[Feldstien Soto’s] decision not to file criminal charges on the vast majority of students arrested by LAPD on USC’s campus last spring ratifies the student and faculty right to protest as a fundamental and lawful ‘exercise of speech,’ in her words,” USC Roski School of Art and Design Vice Dean of Faculty Amelia Jones wrote in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “As a supporter of the students and someone who attended the entirely peaceful protests almost every day, I am thrilled to see this issue resolved and freedom of speech ratified.”
Sarah Stein contributed to this reporting.