The University of California, Los Angeles, was slapped with a lawsuit on Tuesday for stonewalling a public records request related to an "activist-in-residence," Lisa Gray-Garcia, who demanded that students pray to "Mama Earth" during a mandatory lecture for UCLA medical students.
The Goldwater Institute, a conservative nonprofit, filed the request on October 31, 2025. Nearly five months later, UCLA has not produced any of the records sought by the institute, including Gray-Garcia's contract with the university and any course syllabi she has prepared.
As a guest speaker at UCLA medical school, Gray-Garcia led students who attended her mandatory lecture in chants of "Free, Free Palestine," an incident cited by the Justice Department in a lawsuit accusing the university of anti-Semitism. The self-described "poverty scholar" has also referred to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks as "justice" and called the University of California, San Francisco, a "Zionist funded akkkademik institution."
The record request targets documents that could be fodder for the Justice Department's complaint. It covers any emails to or from Gray-Garcia that use the terms "Israel," "Palestine," "genocide," or "Zionist," as well as all orientation materials for the Activist-in-Residence program, which includes a $10,000 stipend for "movement leaders to undertake power-shifting scholarship."
"Under California law, taxpayer-funded institutions like UCLA cannot withhold public records like the ones Goldwater has requested, even if those records include embarrassing or controversial information that the institutions would prefer to keep hidden," said Goldwater Institute attorney Brad Benbrook. "UCLA proudly advertises on its website that it pays 'Activists-in-Residence' like Ms. Gray-Garcia to engage in the type of 'poverty scholarship' and 'revolutionary journalism' she pursues, yet it has refused to produce the basic documents Goldwater has requested about her work for UCLA and the financial support UCLA provides."
UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Goldwater Institute filed its complaint after UCLA repeatedly pushed back the delivery date for the records, citing the "very time-consuming process" of compiling them. The university has been known to slow-walk the production of sensitive documents: After the UCLA medical school was accused of lowering admissions standards for minority applicants, it took more than eight months for UCLA to comply with a public records request for data on student performance.
Such delays can violate the California Public Records Act, which requires agencies to produce records "promptly." The Goldwater lawsuit relies heavily on that provision, arguing that "UCLA has violated the CPRA by not making the responsive … documents and writings available promptly."
"Taxpayers have a right to know what is being taught and how much a university is paying for it," said Stacy Skankey, the litigation director of the Goldwater Institute's American Freedom Network. "UCLA should have responded quickly to our basic records request about Lisa Gray-Garcia's work with the school. Unfortunately, they simply refuse to follow the law.
The complaint is the latest lawsuit against the embattled university, which is already embroiled in two separate cases: the anti-Semitism lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and a discrimination complaint focused on the medical school's alleged use of racial preferences.
Based on whistleblower testimony from admissions officers, the second complaint was filed by Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the Harvard affirmative action case, and has since been joined by the Trump administration, which obtained data showing that black and Hispanic matriculants had much lower test scores than their white and Asian peers.
The medical school has also faced blowback for the mandatory class, "Structural Racism and Health Equity," in which Gray-Garcia told students to kneel before "Mama Earth" and led them in anti-Israel chants. Readings for the course included an essay by "fat liberationist" Marquisele Mercedes, who claims "ob*sity" is a slur "used to exact violence on fat people."
Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world's foremost experts on obesity, described the curriculum as "pedagogical malpractice."
UCLA "has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate," Flier told the Free Beacon in 2024. "As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking."
