This post was updated Aug. 3 at 9:05 p.m.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleged Tuesday that UCLA has created a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students since Palestinian political party and militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

In a letter addressed to UC President Michael Drake, Harmeet Dhillon – an assistant attorney general at the DOJ – said UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to adequately respond to claims of antisemitism. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin “under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” according to the DOJ.

Pro-Palestine protests erupted on UCLA’s campus following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel began its offensive in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, according to the Associated Press.

Protest activity peaked in spring 2024, when pro-Palestine protesters set up an encampment in Dickson Plaza to demand that UCLA divest from companies associated with the Israeli military. The encampment, which began April 25, 2024, was declared unlawful by UCLA on April 30, 2024, and was swept by police, who arrested over 200 protesters May 2, 2024.

The notice said UCLA failed to request law enforcement to “properly stop the unlawful encampment.” Dhillon added in the letter that UCLA received at least 11 complaints alleging antisemitic or anti-Israeli discrimination from demonstrators while the encampment was ongoing.

Earlier Tuesday, the UC agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit brought by three Jewish students and a professor who alleged that UCLA allowed the encampment to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The settlement included an injunction for the next 15 years that prohibits the university from knowingly allowing for the exclusion of “Jewish students, faculty, and/or staff from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and/or campus areas.” 

Multiple UCLA faculty and students – some of whom are Jewish – filed a motion to suspend the injunction, with the hope of reopening the case despite the settlement. The faculty and students argued in the motion that the plaintiffs’ core claim regarding the “Jew Exclusion Zone” is false – citing the fact that the encampment included Jewish people and hosted a Shabbat and a Seder – and that the defendants did not ‘defend the case in any meaningful way.'”

[Related: UC to pay $6.45M to settle antisemitism lawsuit over pro-Palestine encampment]

Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, said in an emailed statement Wednesday that UCLA “has addressed and will continue to address the issues raised in yesterday’s Department of Justice notice, as evidenced by the UCLA settlement.”

“We have cooperated fully with the Department of Justice’s investigation and are reviewing its findings closely,” Holbrook said in the statement.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release announcing the results of the investigation that the DOJ’s findings demand “severe accountability” from UCLA. 

The Trump administration has frozen funding from several universities that have allegedly allowed antisemitism on their campuses – including Columbia University, which recently reached a settlement with the federal government to restore $1.3 billion in funding. 

As part of the agreement, Columbia agreed to pay a $200 million fine and committed to name coordinators to respond to antisemitism allegations, provide university-wide training on antisemitism and include the definition of antisemitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in its antidiscrimination policy.

“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Bondi said in the press release. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”

The notice includes accounts from Jewish community members that were pulled from interviews conducted by the DOJ and a report released by the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at UCLA on Oct. 16, 2024. 

Dhillon also said in the notice that the report found that claims of antisemitism were “minimized” and not taken seriously by faculty and staff. 

Leo Terrell, the head of the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, said in a Fox News interview in May that the UC should expect discrimination lawsuits and hate crime charges due to antisemitism. 

On May 9, the DOJ launched an investigation into the UC’s response to “antisemitic discrimination, harassment, abuse, and retaliation against students,” the notice said. The DOJ is yet to come to a conclusion on if other UC campuses violated the Equal Protection Clause or Title VI. 

“UCLA failed to take timely and appropriate action in response to credible claims of harm and hostility on its campus,” Dhillon said in the press release. “Its inaction constitutes a clear violation of our federal civil rights laws, and the Justice Department will hold UCLA accountable to their legal obligations so that all students can have equal protection under the law.”