This post was updated March 6 at 8:18 p.m.

The USA Judicial Board on Friday unanimously rejected an appeal to overturn the USA Elections Board’s disqualification of a student fee initiative from the May Undergraduate Students Association Council election.

Jiorden King, the chairperson of the Community Programs Office Student Leadership Council, petitioned the judicial board to allow the Basic and Essential Needs (BEN) Initiative to proceed. During the hearing, King – a fourth year psychology student – said the students behind the petition-based initiative sought to promote greater access to basic needs resources.

King did not respond in time for a request for comment on the Judicial Board’s decision or on the specifics of how the BEN initiative would have adjusted student fees.

An initiative may be added to the USAC election ballot if its proponents can gather signatures on a petition for it from 10% of the undergraduate student body, though petitions must be approved by the elections board before being circulated. Ballot initiatives that adjust student fees must be approved by a majority of voters, with at least 20% of eligible voters turning out.

The USA Elections Board disqualified the proposition after proponents of the initiative failed to meet a week seven deadline to submit an application for the initiative.

[Related: USA Judicial Board to hear allegations against USA Elections Board]

The SLC gives suggestions on the operations of CPO, a career development and academic support resource housed in the Student Activities Center.

Eli Sepulveda – the judicial board’s chief justice – announced the decision hours after the board heard arguments from King and Vonnie Nightingale Smith, the vice chairperson of the CPO SLC, and Syed Tamim Ahmad and Carl Maier – the chair and vice chair of the USA Elections Board.

King argued in her petition that because the week seven deadline was not outlined on the 2026 Election Calendar for the May election – only on a list of guidelines for fee referendums – the elections board had improperly applied the USA Election Code by disqualifying the initiative.

During the hearing, members of the CPO SLC said they had communicated with UCLA administrators about the ballot initiative prior to the Feb. 16 deadline for submission to the elections board. They added that the guidelines for fee referendums were not easily accessible.

”We did not attempt to bypass the system. We attempted to participate in it,” Smith said in her closing argument.

Ahmad testified, however, that the guidelines were publicized Jan. 6 – nearly six weeks before the deadline for ballot propositions to be submitted to the elections board. He added during closing arguments that the week seven deadline exists for practical reasons relating to referendums’ need for approval from the UC Office of the President and Chancellor Julio Frenk.

Ahmad, who declined a request for comment on the decision, also said during the hearing that the elections board disqualified the BEN initiative only after consulting with UCLA administrators.

King also alleged that another USAC-sponsored proposition – the Bruin Life and Undergraduate Experience Fee Referendum, a $27 quarterly fee that would provide additional funding for Associated Students UCLA programming – had been submitted to the elections board at the same time. She also claimed that the referendum’s language underwent significant changes between its submission to the elections board and its approval by USAC.

[Related: Fee-increasing referendums pass USAC, await chancellor approvals for May ballots]

King argued that this constituted unequal application of the election code, though Ahmad said during closing arguments that the week seven deadline had been uniformly enforced.

“It’s really unfair, especially for those not in USAC,” said King, a 2025 USAC presidential candidate, at the hearing.

The judicial board ruled that the elections board did not unfairly apply the election code but ordered the elections board to update its calendar – which did not contain many of the dates listed in the referendum guidelines – to outline all campaign deadlines, including all deadlines for ballot proposition approval.

“The JUDICIAL BOARD formally admonishes the USAC Elections Board for its failure to enumerate all material election-related deadlines, including those governing the administrative review and petition processes for student fee referenda, in the officially adopted Elections Calendar,” Sepulveda said in the decision’s announcement.

Even though the judicial board found that the elections board violated the election code by not providing all ballot deadlines on the election calendar, Sepulveda said its findings did not change the elections board’s decision to remove BEN from the spring ballot.

Sepulveda did not respond in time to a request for comment on the case or why the judicial board upheld the elections board’s decision to disqualify BEN. The board did not release a full opinion for the decision, but Sepulveda said in the announcement that it would make the full opinion available within two weeks.

Contributing reports from Lauren Nguyen, Daily Bruin contributor.