UCLA stands down

I wrote here about the preliminary injunction entered against UCLA by Judge Mark Scarsi in Frankel v. Regents of the University of California. I called this opening paragraph of Judge Scarsi’s order the Scarsi scar:

In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.

UCLA challenges plaintiffs’ standing, but its essential defense in the case all but invokes Bob Dylan’s song: It Ain’t Me, Babe. “It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.”

Injunctions are appealable under federal law and UCLA appealed Judge Scarsi’s preliminary injunction to the Ninth Circuit. However, the Washington Free Beacon reports that UCLA has dismissed its appeal. As a result, Judge Scarsi’s preliminary injunction will remain in effect while the case is litigated.

The Free Beacon obtained a statement from assistant UCLA director of media relations Katherine Alvarado. She said the school will “forgo an appeal given UCLA’s own anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies and the current implementation of the directives issued by the UC Office of the President. We will abide by the injunction as this case makes its way through the courts,” Alvarado added.

In my own comment on the injunction I predicted that Judge Scarsi’s order would leave a scar. I think UCLA’s statement is an admission of a kind suggesting that the scar is permanent.

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