California Superior Court Judge Affirms Mob Rule at UCLA

received a final seal of approval from California Superior Court Judge H. Jay Ford III  last week.

Ford finalized his December 1 preliminary ruling that UCLA administrators acted properly when they suspended a professor who sparked an online furor after he tartly reproached a student for seeking special privileges for black students.

In issuing his final judgment on the lawsuit filed by longtime UCLA business school lecturer Gordon Klein, Ford also canceled the hearing he scheduled on objections to his ruling that Klein’s lawyer had filed.

The judge sounds kind of haughty.

Steven Goldberg, the lawyer for Klein, told the California Globe that, “It looks like he didn’t want to have to address the issues and discuss the issues in court. “

Sounding incredulous, Goldberg said the judge “just decides to cancel the hearing and say the objections are overruled. I think this shows a tacit acknowledgement that his statement of decision [is] indefensible and that [our] objections are valid and can not be answered.”

Klein had sued the UCLA business school dean who suspended him and the University of California Board of Regents for breach of contract and false light, a form of libel. He also contended UCLA was responsible for him losing his side gig as a paid expert witness because of the controversy.

The case went to trial this summer. Klein opted for a bench trial where the judge issues a ruling,  instead of a jury hearing the case.

Goldberg said the ruling against Klein on all counts was a travesty that contravened the evidence and the law.

He speculated that the judge was guilty of rank bias.

“I can’t read his mind” but “it is just [my] inference or an opinion that either there was some undisclosed bias or some intervening factor that changed the course of the result. Anyone who observed the trial would have objectively concluded we should have won this case in a landslide. It is my opinion that the judge had to engage in mental gymnastics to justify a decision that was reached beforehand and then he had to ignore evidence and distort evidence to reverse engineer the decision.”

Goldberg’s central critique is that Ford disregarded the plain fact that UCLA acted to placate angry students by suspending Klein so their disciplinary action was an exercise of bad faith that breached his contract’s promise of academic freedom.

Ford had ruled that Klein’s contract gave administrators unfettered discretion to temporarily place him on administrative leave–he was returned to the classroom three weeks later.

But Goldberg said it is a staple of contract law that even the discretion you are accorded must be exercised in good faith–meaning here that you can’t make decisions based on the whims of a mob.

An online petition demanded that Klein be fired over his email. He had reproached the Asian student who asked him to essentially cancel finals for black students in June 2020 because they were supposedly traumatized by the recent killing of George Floyd.

“He had a contractual right of academic freedom,” Goldberg explained. “It would be bad faith to discipline him because he refused to provide racial preferences because of the exam and he explained it and they didn’t like how he explained it because they have different beliefs. They don’t have discretion if he didn’t do something wrong. This was a rush to judgment. The evidence was overwhelming. “

One administrator even worried there would  be a “riot” if they did not punish Klein, according to an email obtained in discovery.

But Ford maintained in his ruling that catering to online outrage was the prerogative of administrators.

Ford wrote that, “UCLA had the right to determine what public response was necessary to address and mitigate the immediate [and] extraordinary public outrage towards both Klein and UCLA arising from the public disclosure of Klein’s email.”

Ford also deemed “credible” testimony by then-UCLA business school dean Antonio Bernardo that he needed to suspend Klein because he was a threat to student “safety.”

But Goldberg said there was “no evidence provided” at the trial this summer that Klein was some kind of menace to students.

Instead, “the evidence showed Dean Bernardo and the other administrators were personally offended by the email because they didn’t like the position he took and they wanted to appease the mob and they rushed to do it. They were determined to take action against him. It is cowardly and illegal to sacrifice his rights so a mob is appeased.”

Ford also rejected Klein’s complaint that UCLA had placed him in a “false light” by saying he was suspended for “troubling” conduct, ruling that this was a reasonable description of what had occurred.

But Goldberg said the word choice created a “false impression” that Klein had done something objectively wrong.

He plans to appeal the ruling.

Bernardo did not reply to an emailed request for comment about the ruling.

But UCLA is officially standing by its railroading of Klein–still insisting he did something wrong.

In a statement provided to the California Globe, Mary Osako, UCLA Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications, said  “UCLA respects the decision reached by the court. Our university and its leaders support freedom of expression while ensuring a respectful learning environment where all Bruins can thrive. When allegations arise that academic personnel or others have failed to uphold these values, we have rigorous processes in place to ensure fairness for all involved.”

Klein was unavailable for comment.

But in an interview published on the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the free speech group that advocated for him, he was quite eloquent in explaining why he upbraided the student who essentially asked him to cancel final exams for black students.

“The social media crowd deliberately didn’t publish the student’s initial email that I was responding to, because if that letter had been published it would have mentioned that the writer himself was not black. And it would have mentioned that the writer himself was not enduring any particular emotional distress. And it would have mentioned that I previously had sent to the class anti-racist materials.

All of those facts would have led a reasonable observer, reading what I wrote, to recognize that I found the student’s email to be condescending and patronizing toward black students.

In my view, all of my students are capable. All of my students are talented. And I don’t distinguish based on race. I was, frankly, grossly offended that this individual, who I knew to not be black and who self-identified in his email as not being black, would dare insult and characterize his classmates as being lesser in capability, lesser in perseverance, or lesser in talent than him. And so, if there was racism, the racism came from the student who wrote to me. And I challenged that racism.”