A Black man has filed a $50,000 racial discrimination lawsuit against the Jefferson Bus Lines after a driver allegedly threatened to call the police on him if he did not comply with his order to sit in the back.
Per The Kansas City Star, the incident occurred on July 13, 2023, and it involved two Black men and a Jefferson Bus Lines driver. One of the Black men has since filed the lawsuit, and the unnamed driver who forced them to sit in the back is also named as a defendant.
The lawsuit, which was filed on July 7, states that the incident occurred in Fargo, North Dakota, when the two Black men got on a Jefferson Lines bus for a trip. The lawsuit states that though the company’s bus seat policy is based on “first come, first serve,” the driver still told the Black men to sit in the back.
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The lawsuit states that after the three individuals got into an argument, the bus driver threatened to contact the police if the two Black men refused his instructions. The plaintiff ultimately decided to sit in the back because he wanted to stop the argument with the driver, the lawsuit says.
“I think in the moment, it was more of a ‘I just want to get to my destination and be about my business,’” the plaintiff’s attorney, Samuel Savage, told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
READ ALSO: Rare video of Rosa Parks explaining why she refused to give up her seat on the bus
The lawsuit states that the July 13 ride had just two Black passengers on the bus, which was the plaintiff and the other man. And though the driver ordered the two Black men to go and sit in the back of the bus, other passengers had the luxury of sitting wherever they wanted to, per the lawsuit.
Jefferson Lines ultimately instructed the driver to write an incident report four days after the incident, The Kansas City Star reported. In the report, the driver claimed that the men smelled like marijuana – hence his decision to instruct them to sit in the back, the lawsuit states.
The driver received a verbal warning for “deviating from the policy” in August 2023. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights in January also found probable cause that the incident was discriminatory.
In 2009, a Jefferson Lines bus driver similarly asked a Black mother and her 3-year-old daughter to sit in the back. The woman claimed it was because of the color of their skin.
“Rosa Parks took a stand in 1955, refused to give up her seat, and we’re not going back, not now, not ever, not in 2023, not in 2025,” Savage said.
