This post was updated May 26 at 6:26 p.m.

The United States Department of Justice is again suing the UC over alleged antisemitism, claiming that UCLA allowed discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students.

The 53-page complaint – filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California – alleges that the university allowed antisemitic protests on its campus following Palestinian political party and militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people. The DOJ also filed a lawsuit against the UC in February, alleging that the University allowed a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli employees following Hamas’ attacks. 

The DOJ said in the lawsuit that the spring 2024 Palestine solidarity encampment at UCLA was antisemitic and excluded Jewish students. The lawsuit also claims the encampment blocked Jewish and Israeli people from entering academic buildings, but that the university did nothing to stop it. 

Pro-Palestine protesters set up the encampment in Dickson Plaza to demand the University divest from companies associated with the Israeli military, which has since killed 70,000 Palestinians in its military offensive that began in October 2023. Organizers have denied the encampment was antisemitic, however, citing that it included Jewish people and celebrations of Jewish holidays. 

UCLA declared the encampment unlawful April 30, 2024. Police swept the encampment May 2, 2024 – nearly a week after it was first established – and arrested more than 200 people. 

The DOJ alleged in the lawsuit that UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion ignored more than 100 complaints about antisemitism and hostility toward Israeli students following Hamas’ attacks. The lawsuit includes multiple images of antisemitic statements written on signs and Royce Hall from the 2024 Palestine solidarity encampment. 

Chancellor Julio Frenk denounced the DOJ’s claim that UCLA has not sought to address antisemitism in a Tuesday statement. UCLA has reorganized its Civil Rights office, hired an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety and appointed a Title VI officer to combat antisemitism, Frenk added in the statement.

“Combating antisemitism is a moral imperative — one rooted, for me, in personal history that makes indifference unthinkable,” Frenk, whose Jewish paternal family fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, said in the statement. 

The DOJ cited findings from an October 2024 report from UCLA’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which was founded in 2024. The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism – which UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk created in March 2025 to implement the task force’s recommendations – released a May 14 report urging the university to consider a new definition of antisemitism, enforce anti-discrimination policies and ask faculty not to participate in anti-Israel boycotts. 

President James Milliken said in an emailed statement that the lawsuit will not help the University’s efforts to address antisemitism. 

“The Board of Regents and administrative leadership have been unequivocal: antisemitism has no place at the University of California,” he said in the statement. “We have instituted numerous systemwide reforms and programs to promote safety and combat antisemitism on our campuses.” 

The department previously opened an investigation into the UC’s response to incidents of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, retaliation and abuse in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin – on May 9, 2025. 

The DOJ requested in the complaint that UCLA revise its discrimination policies to ensure the university properly addresses Jewish and Israeli students’ harassment or discrimination complaints.

“The Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a Tuesday press release.