UC Santa Cruz police seize phone of student suing over pro-Palestine expulsions
SANTA CRUZ — UC Santa Cruz police seized the cellphone of an undergraduate student plaintiff suing the university over two-week campus expulsions issued to more than 100 pro-Palestine protesters in May.
Attorneys for Laaila Irshad filed a court request to have the department’s search warrant thrown out and her phone returned to her, in addition to destruction of all seized information and unsealing of the affidavit supporting the warrant. Irshad, a third-year student and resident adviser, is claiming that the warrant, alleging a crime of vandalism, is overbroad and that the cellphone contains attorney-client privileged communications and attorney-work product, according to case filings.
The search warrant was issued Sept. 25, just two weeks after Irshad and several co-plaintiffs filed their suit against the university. Police served Irshad with the warrant Oct. 1, days after plaintiffs in the case filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking a freeze on further protest-related campus expulsions, according to the filing. Officers found Irshad while she stood outside her on-campus apartment, where she had led fellow students during a fire alarm, according to the filing.
Attached to the warrant was a screenshot photograph of Irshad being interviewed by a local broadcast news outlet regarding the filing of the case, “thus reinforcing her belief that she was being punished for having participated in this civil rights action,” per Friday’s filing. The warrant’s case number differed from arrests made after the May 30 protest.
“Under the warrant, the UC Santa Cruz police can collect and review everything on Ms. Irshad’s phone — emails, text messages, notes, voicemails, photographs, video, audio data, GPS locations, internet history, cookies, bookmarks and search terms, even her confidential conversations with attorneys,” read a press release issued by plaintiff’s attorneys from the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “The time range is extremely overbroad as well — from when the phone was first activated to the present.”
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 19 before Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati.