Suburban Bus Company: The New Separate but Equal

The Illinois Attorney General is suing Suburban Bus Company for violating the civil rights of Chinese and Jewish students (click here for complaint, http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2018_04/Filed_SE_Complaint.pdf).

A post-Civil War law prohibits a person from depriving others of equal rights, including the right to travel on public highways. The bus company refuses to make stops in areas with predominantly Jewish zip codes, and regularly insults Chinese people in ads (see picture above).

Suburban Bus does not literally put Chinese and Jews in the back of the bus—but they deny service based on religion by deliberately avoiding Jewish areas and by creating a humiliating atmosphere for Chinese patrons (mostly students).

In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads. A group of prominent black, creole, and white New Orleans residents challenged the law. To do this, Homer Plessy, an “octoroon” under law (being seven-eighths European descent and one-eighth African descent), boarded the white car. He was ordered to the “colored” car. When he refused, he was arrested and later convicted.

In one of the worst Supreme Court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson held that the Separate Car Act did not violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The reasoning? As long as blacks had a rail car of equal physical quality, mandatory racial separation did not render the service as discriminatory—in short, the separate but equal doctrine. Brown v. Bd. of Education overturned "separate but equal." In a sign of our troubled times, a court will now be put in the position of deciding whether Plessy (never formally overruled) or Brown applies to this case.