University illegally blocked conservative event while pro-Palestinian encampments took hold on campus, lawsuit alleges

The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) blocked a conservative speaking event from occurring on campus despite allowing anti-Israel protests to continue for weeks, a new lawsuit alleges.

Young America’s Foundation (YAF) filed a lawsuit against the university on Thursday after the school prevented its YAF chapter from hosting a speech in May by Robert Spencer, an outspoken critic of radical Islam, titled “Everything You Know About Palestine Is Wrong.” The university delayed responding to the event requests before blocking access to the event space entirely, saying that it must be moved to an “out-of-the-way location” due to pro-Palestinian activists threatening to protest the event, the lawsuit alleges.

“At the same time UCLA was complicit in the widespread violation of students’ rights and in other criminal and abusive conduct by anti-Israel activists, it was doing everything it could to derail plaintiffs’ proposed pro-Israel lecture planned to take place,” the lawsuit reads. “UCLA repeatedly ignored requests for information, withheld paperwork approvals, prevented plaintiffs from effectively advertising in advance of the event, and engaged in other bureaucratic delay tactics.”

The students threatening to protest the event were apparently the same ones that had participated in the weeks-long encampment in April, according to the lawsuit.

“UCLA cannot, of course, reasonably claim that it needed to handicap plaintiff’s pro-Israel event at the last second due to an emerging threat from protestors who UCLA itself had emboldened by its extreme passivity (not to mention its active complicity) only days before,” the lawsuit states. “In reality, UCLA’s last minute switch was simply a continuation of what it had already been doing: taking an extremely fastidious approach to one side of the debate (the pro-Israel side) and playing so ‘hands off’ with respect to the other side that the campus was descending into spirals of vandalism and violence.”

A federal judge ruled in August that UCLA could not prevent Jewish students from accessing parts of campus after the university allowed protesters to create a “Jew Exclusion Zone” that required students to pledge their support for Palestine. The university experienced a swathe of violent protests since Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, some of which resulted in arrests though many students have yet to be punished.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to prohibit UCLA from engaging in viewpoint discrimination and prevent them from blocking events due to pressure from protesters.

“Defendants imposed this double standard because they disagree with Plaintiffs’ pro-Israel message,” the lawsuit states. “In so doing, they engaged in viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Defendants also violated the First Amendment for the independent reason that when they locked the lecture hall doors and tried to move Plaintiffs’ event to an out-of-the-way venue, they gave official government sanction to a potential campus ‘shout down’ mob that set out to prevent Plaintiffs from having their say in public.”

“Cancel culture has gone unchecked for far too long,” Scott Walker, president of Young America’s Foundation, said in a statement. “YAF’s lawsuit aims to rebalance the equation, ensuring universities don’t cave to unhinged mobs by canceling pro-Israel speakers and instead protect them and their First Amendment rights.”

UCLA and the YAF chapter did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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