Jessica Felber, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and Brian Messy, a student at Berkeley, filed a lawsuit in August 2011 against the University of California and Berkeley President Mark Yudoff, along with Berkeley's chancellor, the Regents of the University of California, the Associated Students University of California and Berkeley's dean of students for failing to protect them from verbal and physical assaults.

The lawsuit claimed UC Berkeley has tolerated years of programming by anti-Israel student groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) despite reports of Jewish students being cursed at, threatened and assaulted. By continuing to authorize and fund SJP and MSA as official student organizations, the lawsuit alleged, the university allowed itself to become a dangerous and threatening environment for Jewish students.