The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against the University of California on Tuesday, alleging that UCLA violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by allowing a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff.
The complaint, filed by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, alleges that antisemitic harassment intensified on UCLA’s campus following the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. UCLA pushed back on the accusations in a public statement, stating the school “has taken concrete and significant steps” to combat antisemitism.
According to the lawsuit, Jewish faculty members were physically threatened, had classrooms disrupted and were excluded from portions of campus during protests.
In a Justice Department press release, First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said UCLA “stood by as Jewish employees were subjected to harassment.”
Essayli also said UCLA administrators “allowed virulent anti-Semitism to flourish on campus,” and the federal government has “an obligation to step in and ensure a discrimination-free environment at our universities.”
In response to the lawsuit, Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a statement, “UCLA has taken concrete and significant steps to strengthen campus safety, enforce policies, and combat antisemitism in a systemic and sustained manner.”
In the statement, Osako noted various institutional efforts like hiring a dedicated Title VI and VII officer and implementing time, place and manner policies.
“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,” said Osako.
Legal scholars say the government faces a significant burden in proving its claims.
Thomas Berry is the director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Berry said the government has numerous tools to pressure universities.
“There are many tools in the government’s arsenal to put pressure on universities, to threaten to cut their funding, to make their lives difficult, to threaten to investigate them,” said Berry.
He added that the administration’s coercion to change policies on academics and student life indicates constitutional breaches.
“When those universities are changing their behavior not out of free choice, but out of fear of the government – that, in itself, is a First Amendment violation.”
Berry said he views the lawsuit as part of something broader.
“The administration has used coercion against universities so often that they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “They’re bringing these investigations in good faith, and you have to see it as part of this pattern of what they’ve done against not just UCLA, but Harvard, Columbia and many other schools.”
Neal McCluskey is the director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom. He said that of all the institutions the Trump administration has targeted, it has the strongest argument to go after UCLA.
“The Trump administration overall has been making demands of universities that go far beyond stopping antisemitism,” McCluskey said.
He also spoke of the compact that Trump offered to nine universities in October of 2025, which asked campus leaders to support Trump’s agenda for access to federal research funds.
“It is also clear that the Trump administration has a much bigger agenda for what it would like to coerce schools to do than just stop antisemitism,” said McCluskey.
To McCluskey, the lawsuit smacks of “lawfare,” in which it is “dragging institutions through long court cases in order to get those institutions to make changes that the Trump administration wants,” he said.
“That’s not the role of the federal government,” McCluskey said. “And that threatens dangerous centralization of power over the country’s college and university system.”
Elainna Hemming contributed to the reporting of this story.