UCLA has admitted that university employees were exposed to antisemitism on campus, even as it begs a federal judge to toss the Trump administration’s lawsuit accusing the school of letting hate run rampant.

“There is no question that some University employees were exposed to antisemitism on campus,” UCLA’s lawyers wrote in a filing Monday. “UCLA has responded—and will continue to respond—to antisemitism, regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit. But the legal claims raised in this litigation are flawed for numerous reasons and should be dismissed.”

The university is asking U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder to throw out the Justice Department’s case “with prejudice,” meaning it couldn’t be refiled.

UCLA argues it can’t be held liable for harassment by protesters, students and outsiders it doesn’t control, calling the government’s theory one that “stretches the law beyond recognition.”

The school said it “categorically denies” that it intentionally refused to address harassment of Jewish and Israeli employees, and claimed the feds had “pleaded itself out of court” by arguing UCLA was merely negligent.

The Justice Department said it “will respond to UCLA’s motion in court.”

UCLA also went after the professors at the center of the case.

“There are over 55,000 faculty and staff at UCLA.  Yet DOJ proffers individual hostile work environment claims for just two employees, Drs. Shamsa and Holloway,” the memo reads.

The filing says Dr. Kamran Shamsa received “financial compensation” when he settled a separate antisemitism lawsuit against UCLA in 2025, and that the deal bars his claims here. It also notes he attended the protests “during his work breaks,” away from his workplace at the medical school.

The school said the email announcing Professor Ian Holloway’s discrimination complaint to his department was a standard request to preserve records that it was legally required to send.

And UCLA argued two other plaintiffs weren’t employees at all: one is a professor emeritus who retired in 2004, the other an unpaid volunteer.

The university also took a swipe at the Trump administration, calling its suspension of $584 million in UCLA federal funding “an unlawful tactic” and accusing the feds of “retaliatory defundings.”

UCLA touted its rise from an “D” to a “B” on the Anti-Defamation League’s campus antisemitism report card and pointed to a federal judge’s recent dismissal of similar claims for injunctive relief against Harvard.

In response to a request for comment, the university pointed to its motion, noting that UCLA “has taken strong actions to combat antisemitism over the last three years,” including under Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose grandparents fled Nazi Germany.

The school highlighted Frenk’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, which released a roadmap in May 2026, along with a reorganized civil rights office, a new campus safety chief and a dedicated Title VI officer.

UCLA also noted it suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine in February 2025.

The university pointed to Jewish allies, too.

More than 130 Jewish UCLA faculty and staff signed a public letter opposing the DOJ lawsuit, and ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has praised the school’s progress.