Overview
- Law students disrupted a UCLA Federalist Society talk by DHS general counsel James Percival with loud shouts, boos, and phone ringtones, with some reports alleging threats.
- Assistant dean Bayrex Martí emailed the chapter urging it not to name students visible in event videos and warned the group could face campus processes if harm was reasonably predictable.
- FIRE, a civil-liberties group, said the warning chilled protected speech and urged UCLA to retract it as a violation of students’ rights to share truthful information from a public event.
- UCLA later said it does not discipline students for speech protected by the First Amendment and apologized for any lack of clarity in the earlier message.
- Commentators highlighted a double standard because protesters had posted names of Federalist Society members, with right-leaning outlets casting UCLA as biased and linking the case to past disruptions at Northwestern and Stanford.