Trump administration sues University of California over UCLA antisemitism

The Trump administration sued the University of California on Tuesday, alleging UCLA failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment and opening a new legal fight between Washington and one of the country’s biggest public university systems.

In the Justice Department’s lawsuit, federal lawyers said UCLA was deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment and allowed a hostile educational environment to persist. The government asked the court to intervene, said officials should be able to claw back or deny federal grant money and moved the dispute out of campus disciplinary channels. That turns the case into a test of how far the administration can press civil-rights enforcement against universities.

The suit says university leaders knew enough about campus conditions and still failed to protect students’ equal access to education. In the department’s announcement, Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said the government was holding UCLA to account for tolerating a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students.

“Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
— Harmeet K. Dhillon, U.S. Department of Justice

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said the case was also about the federal government’s duty to enforce basic campus protections. Reuters reported that Essayli said universities must maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students, giving the administration a straightforward public argument for why Washington should step in.

“Universities have an obligation to maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students.”
— Bill Essayli, Reuters, May 26, 2026

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk rejected that account. In the same Reuters account, Frenk said it was “simply wrong” to suggest UCLA had been passive in the face of antisemitism. The exchange leaves a court to sort through sharply different accounts of what happened on campus and how the university responded.

UCLA was already under scrutiny before the suit. Reporting on the filing said the university’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion received more than 100 complaints about antisemitism and anti-Israeli hostility. UCLA also paid $6 million last summer to settle discrimination claims brought by Jewish faculty members and students. For the administration, those details help frame the case as part of a longer fight over campus protests, civil-rights enforcement and federal money. Officials have already used investigations and funding threats against universities over antisemitism complaints; this suit takes that pressure into court against a flagship public system.

For universities beyond California, the suit raises the stakes because federal grant money supports laboratories, faculty projects and long-term planning. A Justice Department win would give officials a clearer template for similar cases elsewhere. If UCLA prevails, the lawsuit will still show how quickly campus complaints can become a direct contest with Washington.