SANTA CRUZ — A Santa Cruz judge on Tuesday denied a court injunction that sought to temporarily halt UC Santa Cruz’s practice of mass banning students and faculty members without individual fact-finding hearings.
An alliance of civil rights firms representing two students and a faculty member filed a lawsuit in September suing the university after the arrest of more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters involved in a campus blockade. The month-long encampment and protest ended after a show of force from systemwide university law enforcement, who took remaining protesters into custody at the end of May, and banned them from campus for two weeks.
On Tuesday morning, several dozen UCSC students and supporters crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court courtroom of Judge Syda Cogliati to hear results of the predisposition hearing. While the matter of blocking protesters’ campus bans without a hearing remains to be litigated at trial, Cogliati said she would not grant the order for the case’s interim, citing a need to balance issues related to community risk of harm.
The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Center for Protest Law and Litigation and civil rights attorney Thomas Seabaugh, argues that campus policy requires a hearing for each student before findings sustaining the temporary campus ban can be made. Arrested students and faculty were unable to access the campus and their possessions at the end of the school term, causing hardships for many, according to the suit.
Attorneys for the university argued Tuesday that the imminent risk of harm caused by protesters merited the ban under California Penal Code Section 626.4, for fear that protesters would return to the campus entrance blockade as soon as they were released from custody. The defendants cited examples of imminent danger from confrontations between cars and protesters, the barring of campus access to fire apparatus, ingress and egress blockages and other issues.
“I think what happened to the students was a terrible injustice and I think it was moving to see so many students here in court today. I think that was a remarkable show of solidarity and spirit on the part of the students,” Seabaugh said after the hearing. “The judge determined that the facts were too messy today to make a determination preliminarily, one way or another, but we are not disheartened and still believe we’re in the right and the students were right to challenge this policy.”
According to a frequently asked questions about Section 626.4 page posted to UCSC’s website June 1, the law “gives the chief administrative officer of a campus (or an officer or employee designated by the chief administrative officer to maintain order on the campus) the authority to exclude disruptive persons from the campus temporarily, for up to 14 days.”
ACLU attorney Chessie Thacher said outside the courtroom, “The court decided that the facts were in dispute and that the need for protecting campus safety was so great with the balance of interests weighed against granting the motion for preliminary injunction. That has no bearing on the ultimate merit of this case and plaintiffs are heartened by the court’s acknowledgment that First Amendment freedoms are fundamental.”
Thacher said plaintiffs already had earned a “win” after UCSC updated its local policy surrounding 626.4 campus evictions with a new reporting requirement and new reporting forms.
The civil lawsuit is scheduled to return for hearing in Department 5 at 9 a.m., Jan. 10, 2025.
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