The Trump administration sued the University of California on Tuesday, alleging UCLA administrators routinely ignored and failed to report employee antisemitism complaints and allowed a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli employees as campus tensions continued after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the war in Gaza.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California's Central District, is an escalation of the administration's legal pressure on UC and focuses on allegations tied to UCLA.
The Justice Department alleges an ongoing "severe and pervasive" antisemitism problem and points to pro-Palestinian protests, including one in January, that it contends were anti-Jewish or anti-Israel.
The suit was filed by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division against the Regents of the University of California and alleges violations of Title VII, the federal law that bars workplace discrimination.
The complaint filed Tuesday is listed as Case No. 2:26-cv-01946 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The administration's lawsuit follows multiple civil rights investigations launched since 2025 into the UC system or individual campuses.
In August, the administration demanded nearly $1.2 billion to settle civil rights investigations tied to UCLA, including allegations involving antisemitism complaints by students and employees, race-based affirmative action, and the recognition of transgender people's gender identities on campus.
Tuesday's case stems from a federal workplace antisemitism investigation opened last March.
Government attorneys said at the time they believed there was a potential pattern of discrimination against Jewish employees.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the department's investigation found UCLA administrators allegedly allowed "virulent anti-Semitism" to flourish on campus and said the lawsuit underscores the department's position against antisemitism.
The Justice Department also said in its public announcement that the case alleges Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff at UCLA faced a hostile work environment, and that numerous employees were forced to take leave, work from home, or leave their jobs.
Protesters and some civil liberties advocates argue there is an important distinction between political criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish bias targeting Jews as Jews.
In that view, support for Palestinian rights, criticism of Israeli government policy or opposition to Zionism is not automatically antisemitic unless the speech uses anti-Jewish stereotypes, assigns collective blame to Jews or targets Jewish people because they are Jewish.
Supporters of that distinction often cite the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, which states that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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