The Department of Justice on Tuesday reported its investigation into the University of California, Los Angeles, and determined the school violated Jewish students’ civil rights by failing to adequately respond to complaints of harassment and abuse they suffered on campus. 

“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,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “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.”

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In a letter, the DOJ notified the California university that it had been found in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, similar to a federal notice handed to Harvard last month. UCLA could lose federal funding after the government’s findings, with Bondi suggesting the school will pay “a heavy price,” although the DOJ has not yet confirmed how much the California university could lose. 

UCLA was the site of multiple pro-Palestinian protests and encampments in 2024, with some demonstrations turning violent. In addition to findings of antisemitism against students, protesters targeted Jewish leadership at the university, including vandalizing UCLA Regent Jay Sures’ home and an encounter with professor Nir Hoftman in which he said, “they tackled me, assaulted me, and stole my AirPod.” 

Hoftman said that during the encampments, “Jews were not allowed to go into the campus. Jews were not allowed to go into the library. Jews were not allowed to go to classes.”

The Department of Education has been investigating UCLA since February over concerns that school authorities allowed antisemitism to fester. Days after the DOJ launched a similar investigation into the university in March, the school rolled out a new initiative designed to combat antisemitism as it faced growing scrutiny from the Trump administration and the possibility of losing federal funding. 

To justify the civil rights violation notice Tuesday, Bondi cited recent court findings that “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” and that pro-Palestinian protest encampments created on April 25 “led UCLA to effectively make certain of its programs, activities, and campus areas available to other students when UCLA knew that some Jewish students, including Plaintiffs, were excluded based o[n] their genuinely held religious beliefs.” 

The DOJ also faulted the university for waiting until May 2, 2024, to disband the encampments, arguing that waiting to do so allowed an antisemitic environment to fester on campus. The investigation cited multiple antisemitic incidents, including a Jewish man who was physically assaulted for his ethnicity and told by members of the encampment that “Hitler missed one.” Another student and her mom were taken to the hospital after encampment participants pushed them to the ground and kicked them. 

“The clearest way for UCLA to have eliminated the hostile environment is to have disbanded the encampment as soon as it became aware that Jewish and Israeli students were being physically assaulted and prevented from accessing parts of campus,” Bondi’s letter read. 

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Part of the DOJ’s case against UCLA rested on a roughly $6 million settlement the university made this week to resolve a lawsuit from Jewish students alleging the school permitted antisemitic conduct during the spring 2024 pro-Palestinian encampments on the campus.  In the case Frankel v. Regents of the University of California, the plaintiffs claimed that certain areas during the encampment blocking people of Jewish descent from entering amounted to “Jew exclusion zones.”

While denying any wrongdoing, UCLA agreed to settle fully, with $50,000 payments to each of the plaintiffs.