UCLA Sides With Mob, Silences Speaker

After weeks of violent anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activism on campus, students Brooke Broll and Macy Frousiakis (neé Roepke) wanted to bring a pro-Israel speaker to present a different view at UCLA. Their Young America’s Foundation chapter asked to reserve a room in the Student Union more than a month ahead, with time to plan for security against possible protests. UCLA eventually gave the green light, but only after being threatened with a lawsuit and with almost no time left to advertise.   

The night before the event, activists unsurprisingly said they wanted to shut it down. The next day, instead of providing security as promised, UCLA locked YAF members out of the Student Union for two hours, then—with no counter-protestors on the scene—said the lecture could only go ahead half a mile away, on the edge of campus. The lecture never took place and the mob won without even showing up. 

Why It’s Illegal:

The First Amendment forbids a public university from silencing or limiting speech based on viewpoint. UCLA violated students’ constitutional rights in two different ways: first, by capitulating to activists’ objections to the message and second, by acting on their own ideological bias against pro-Israel views. 

What we’re asking the court to do:

The district court initially dismissed the case, ruling that a public university does not have to protect a speaker from a threatening mob inside a campus lecture hall. If this ruling stands, then that becomes the rule for every public campus in nine states. We’ve appealed to the Ninth Circuit, asking it to revive the case and rule that a public university must protect, not silence, speakers invited to campus. 

“When UCLA cancelled our event without doing anything to enforce the law, they let the bullies win.  I felt betrayed by my university. This shouldn’t happen to anyone.” – Macy Frousiakis, UCLA graduate, former YAF at UCLA member

Why this case matters:

• Many of UCLA’s 50,000 students belong to various campus groups, all of which are directly affected by UCLA’s surrender to a censorious mob. Now, any group that hosts a speaker or event on campus that activist groups object to may well find its events moved or ended to suit the whims of those activists. 

• Assaults on free speech through disrupting, deplatforming, or canceling speakers are not unique to UCLA. Research from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shows more than 2,000 campus deplatforming attempts since 1998, with a dramatic rise in recent years. In 2025 there were 184 attempts at disinvitations, event cancellations, and disruptions. 2026 is on track to eclipse that number. 

• This case is part of CIR’s broader mission of defending the freedom of speech and association. We’ve spent three decades litigating First Amendment cases on public university campuses, including a landmark 1995 Supreme Court win in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that a public university cannot deny funding to student groups because of their viewpoint. University officials do not get to pick which views survive on campus—not directly, and not indirectly by handing the decision to whoever makes threats.

“YAF is about free speech and creating a space where students can have difficult conversations, challenge each other’s ideas, and hopefully find some common ground. What was frustrating about what happened at UCLA is that students weren’t even given the opportunity to participate in that civil discourse. The students who disagreed with the speaker should have had the opportunity to show up, ask questions, and argue their points. Instead, the university blocked the event and took that opportunity away from all of its students.” – Brooke Broll, UCLA graduate, former YAF at UCLA member

The Full Story

A troubling double standard

Brooke Broll was vice chair of the UCLA chapter of Young America’s Foundation, a national nonprofit that brings speakers to college campuses. Macy Frousiakis was a member. On April 13, 2024, the chapter asked UCLA to reserve a room in the Student Union for a May 15 talk by Robert Spencer on the Israel-Hamas war. Spencer is the founder of Jihad Watch and is a critic of what he sees as dangerous strains of fundamentalist Islam. His talk would likely stir controversy. 

In late April, activists had erected an encampment in a UCLA quad to protest the war in Gaza, ringed it with checkpoints, and only allowed those who would call for Israel’s elimination to enter. Jewish students who refused were turned away. Over that week, activists assaulted pro-Israel students and a Jewish professor; one student was hospitalized. UCLA allowed the encampment until Los Angeles police cleared it on May 2.  

At the same time UCLA was allowing the anti-Israel encampment to remain in place, it was stalling approval of YAF’s pro-Israel lecture. The YAF chapter met every procedural requirement; its follow-ups went unanswered. A security meeting on April 30—attended by Brooke—ended with UCLA refusing to provide security and also refusing to say when it would issue its decision on whether to approve the event in the first place. With time dwindling before summer break, YAF’s counsel wrote to UCLA, warning that the window for pre-event publicity was closing and raising the prospect of litigation. UCLA then approved the event and assured adequate security.  

Approved, then moved

The night before the event, as Brooke and Macy projected a 20-foot announcement of the lecture onto the side of a campus building, several student activists confronted them, claiming the projection broke a campus rule and threatening to report it to campus officials. Other students even posted online that they intended to shut the event down. Within hours, Dean of Students Jasmine Rush told Brooke and Macy to stop the projection. 

On the day of the talk, YAF’s setup crew—including Brooke and Macy—arrived to prepare the room but were locked out. UCLA’s campus safety office told the YAF crew that the university was unprepared to secure the Student Union and offered a room in the geology building a half-mile away on the edge of campus. UCLA never explained why a room it had already approved became unsecurable in a single day, with no new information about any threat. Worse, at the time UCLA issued its order, no protesters had gathered. Afterward, one student activist posted: “WE LOCKED THEM OUT.”  Another posted thanks “to everyone who helped pressure UCLA into cancelling the . . . event.” 

The First Amendment Problem

YAF’s central argument is straightforward: When a crowd threatens a campus speaker because it objects to the speaker’s message, the First Amendment requires a public university to control the crowd—not silence the speaker. UCLA does not dispute that it acted because it expected counter-protestors to react with hostility to Spencer’s message. But speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because it provokes a hostile reaction. When a university gives in to that hostility and silences the speaker, the university itself violates the First Amendment. 

The district court generally agreed with that principle but ruled that it did not apply inside a room the university controls. The court said UCLA would need to protect a speaker in a public park or on a university quad. But because the event was scheduled for a Student Union meeting room—what the law calls as a “limited public forum”—the court said that UCLA could move the speaker elsewhere without having to justify its decision. 

The district court based its ruling on Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign v. King County, a case involving advertising on public buses. In that case, a transit agency pulled ads from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the agency had restricted an entire subject rather than one side of the debate. But UCLA did something different: It silenced only one side. The Ninth Circuit has since made clear that the government generally cannot silence a speaker simply because it fears how listeners may react. Nor can it avoid that First Amendment rule by claiming it “merely sought to relocate him.”  

YAF also brings a second, independent theory: The security concerns were an excuse. UCLA’s administrators acted because they agreed with the activists. UCLA had long encouraged anti-Israel activism on campus and had just allowed weeks of disruptive and unlawful conduct by anti-Israel activists. Yet on the day of the event, administrators suddenly claimed they could not safely secure a building that regularly hosts speakers—even though they had no new information about any actual threat. 

Legal Claims:

Heckler’s Veto: The First Amendment requires a public university to control a hostile crowd and protect the speaker, not silence him. UCLA revoked its earlier event approval and tried to relocate Spencer’s talk rather than manage the student activists who had threatened it. 

Viewpoint Discrimination: A public university may not burden speech based on its viewpoint. UCLA let an anti-Israel encampment stand for weeks, and then revoked its room assignment and tried to relocate a single pro-Israel lecture, citing security concerns—a pretext for its disagreement with the message.