A medical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming that the university violated its freedom of expression by suspending it for its online comments on the Israel War in Gaza, according to judicial documents.
The publications on the social networks of Rupa Marya included expressing “solidarity with the hospitals and health workers that Israel was attacking in Gaza,” according to judicial documents.
The complaint declared that Marya “felt the obligation to speak and did so using his X account.”
The Israel War in Gaza has left more than 52,000 people dead since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 people as hostages. Israel has received intense criticism from all over the world, even from the United Nations, for its actions in Gaza.
“Shooting Dr. Marya not only violates her right to freedom of expression, but threatens us all,” said lawyer Mark Kleiman in a statement. “We must all speak urgently against this type of attacks on our basic rights to advocate justice, and we hope that the court agrees with us that the rights of Dr. Marya have been violated and must be remedied.”
Marya was licensed in September 2024 and her clinical privileges were suspended by the UCSF Executive Medical Board on October 1. The Board called it a “possible imminent danger” and cited publications on social networks, according to judicial documents. His privileges were reinstated on October 15.
According to judicial documents, Marya received “threats of rape and death”, as well as “repeated harassment and threats” due to their positions, according to judicial documents.
Before his suspension, Marya had several interactions with the university regarding his online activity.
In November 2023, the Dean of the UCSF Faculty of Medicine notified Marya that the school would evaluate whether its social media activity violated university policies.
In response to one of Marya’s social media threads that went viral in January 2024, UCSF published a statement about a “theory of circulating conspiracy.”
“Although the statement did not appoint Dr. Marya, Dr. Robert Wachter acknowledged in an email that was in direct response to the social networks of Dr. Marya of January 2,” said the complaint. “The January 6, UCSF statement accused Dr. Marya of promoting a ‘racist’ and ‘anti -Semitic’ ‘conspiracy theory.
According to judicial documents, Marya’s publications “never prevented the performance of their duties as a doctor or member of the faculty, or the regular operation of the university.”
“As a doctor, American citizen and as a person of ancestry of southern Asia raised in the SIJ religious tradition, Dr. Marya has been worried for a long time by US foreign policy, even in the Middle East and the problems related to the conflict between Israel and Palestine,” says the complaint. “Their positions point to state policy and supremacist political ideologies, not in any religious or ethnic group.”
A spokesman from the University of California, San Francisco, said that due to privacy laws, the school cannot comment on the demand.
Marya completed his residence in internal medicine at the University of California in San Francisco in 2007, later he was offered a job and joined the Faculty. However, during the last five years, Marya had no teaching tasks and focused exclusively on patient care in non -teaching hospital medicine services, according to judicial documents.
Marya was also appointed by the governor of California Gavin Newsom for the California Healthy for All in 2021, an initiative to advance a system for universal medical care in the state.
