Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz says it followed the law when it implemented two-week bans from campus against protesters who were arrested May 31 at the Gaza solidarity encampment. Two students and one professor filed a lawsuit alleging that the university didn’t follow policies on due process for the bans. Next Tuesday, a judge could decide the outcome.
A lawsuit challenging UC Santa Cruz’s use of two-week bans from campus against protesters is scheduled for a predisposition hearing and possible decision next Tuesday, Nov. 19, at Santa Cruz County Superior Court.
The lawsuit was filed in September by two UCSC students and one professor who, alongside more than 100 other people, were arrested when law enforcement disbanded a Gaza solidarity encampment on May 31. Police charged the majority with failure to disperse and resisting arrest, and issued notices that they were banned from campus for two weeks.
Students Laaila Irshad, Hannah (Elio) Ellutzi and professor Christine Hong are asking the Santa Cruz court to prohibit UCSC from issuing such bans prior to holding conduct hearings and to require administrators to follow university and state and federal policy on due process.
A campus ban, or a notice of 626.4, comes from California Penal Code section 626.4 and gives the chief administrative officer of a campus “the authority to exclude disruptive persons from campus temporarily for up to 14 days.” If someone with a notice enters campus, the law says they are considered guilty of a misdemeanor.
Rachel Lederman, senior counsel at the Center for Protest Law & Litigation, said Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati could make a decision on whether to grant the preliminary injunction during next Tuesday’s hearing, or she could hear arguments and issue a written decision later. In addition to Lederman, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and civil rights attorney Thomas Seabaugh are representing the students and professor.
“We are asking the court to prohibit the university from using Penal Code section 626.4 to ban any student or faculty member from campus prior to providing notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Lederman told Lookout.
She said they’re asking that the university not be able to issue blanket bans without making a finding that a specific individual fits the criteria established by a California Supreme Court decision, in Braxton v. Municipal Court: that “the situation is such an exigent one that the continued presence on the campus of the person [to be banned] … constitutes a substantial and material threat of significant injury to persons or property.”
Last month, the university filed a statement opposing the protesters’ request for a preliminary injunction that included several declarations from UCSC officials, including Chancellor Cynthia Larive, UCSC Police Chief Kevin Domby, UCSC Police Deputy Chief Ramon Romo and other officers and administrators.
In his declaration, Romo described how he was part of monitoring the encampment while it was in UCSC’s Quarry Plaza and when it moved to the base of campus. He helped develop the plan to disband the encampment and arrest protesters who didn’t follow dispersal orders.
“I believed that the extended barricading of the Main Entrance in May 2024 was an exceptional situation that posed an extreme risk to safety,” he wrote. “Accordingly, I understood from my involvement in the group that planned the removal of the barricades with the Chancellor that the plan was to give notice of 626.4 exclusion orders in conjunction with arrests on May 31, 2024, to ensure the safety of our campus community.”
At other campuses where bans were implemented after clearing encampments, in the UC system and nationally, the encampments weren’t rebuilt, Romo wrote, while encampments at colleges that did not implement campus bans were reconstructed.
“Based on the difference in these outcomes, I agreed with the Chancellor that it was necessary to use 626.4 exclusion orders to prevent the protesters from returning to barricade the main entrance, which would have posed a continued risk to the safety of campus,” he wrote.
Lederman said the officials’ statements show that the university, in response to protests, is using a “guilty-by-association strategy.”
“It admits adopting and executing an advance plan to treat every person arrested at the May 30-31 protest with the same punishment: instant banishment with no hearing and no individualized determination that the particular persons banned each posed a substantial threat,” she told Lookout.
Lederman said she and her client are still waiting for a Dec. 19 hearing to resolve their request for the court to quash a search warrant after police took student Irshad’s phone on Oct. 1. Lederman says the warrant is illegal.
They requested that the university voluntarily freeze, or pause, the search warrant until a decision is made at the hearing, but the university declined to freeze it, according to Lederman.
Lederman said there isn’t a legal procedure that gives the court the ability to freeze the warrant before the hearing.
UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason and UCSC Police Chief Domby didn’t immediately return a request for comment regarding the request to freeze the search warrant.
The hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. next Tuesday in Department 5 of Santa Cruz Superior Court, located at 701 Ocean Street.
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