U.S. Supreme Court Throws Out MTA Appeal!
Bus Riders Union Wins Huge Legal Victory!

Dear Friends of the Bus Riders Union,

In our biggest victory since the Bus Riders Union won the Consent Decree in 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the Los Angeles MTA's two-year-old appeal. The court refused to hear the case, thereby letting stand the five lower court victories in favor of the BRU. Far from an end to our civil rights lawsuit, this Supreme Court victory unlocks a new multi-year period of our legal and mass movement work where the stakes are even broader than the billion and-a-half dollars that we could win for new, clean fuel buses for 400,000 working class bus riders.

We are writing to inform you about this victory and to ask you to help support this new period of work with a tax-deductible contribution-either by purchasing $100 donor tickets to our May 4 Annual Political Party, and/or making a donation right now (details below).

Implications and broader lessons of today's victory:

• We are living in a period of Right Wing ascendancy and increasing viciousness and recklessness. For example, this is the same Supreme Court that passed the Sandoval decision that eviscerates four decades of civil rights law. And it is the same court that literally helped steal a U.S. presidential election, in large measure by disenfranchising tens of thousands of Black voters in Florida. Yet our civil rights lawsuit on behalf of 400,000 Black, Latino, Asian, and white working class bus riders has been able to survive and win landmark victories. How has that been possible?
• Much credit must go to our NAACP LDF lawyers, especially the brilliant writing and strategizing of the original argumentation by Bill Lann Lee and Connie Rice, as well as the tremendous work since then by Richard Larson who has helped navigate the case through the legal minefields now laying waste to many other civil rights cases.
• The lawsuit survived the Sandoval Scalia/Thomas/Rehnquist Supreme Court in part because we had consciously built a case for both intentional and disparate impacts discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. (Only intentional discrimination cases-much harder to prove-are now allowed under Sandoval.) Credit here is also due to the - Bus Riders Union legal team who originally conceived of the case and who have participated in the legal strategizing since day one-highly unusual for a case like this.
• In 1996 we crafted a settlement that the MTA would sign. BRU membership agonized over the decision. Yet the compromises we made now turn out to have been very astute. For in return we were able to armor the civil rights case law with contract law, and a signed "voluntary" agreement entered into by the MTA and BRU.
• Throughout, the open fight against transit racism has been central to our lawsuit and organizing work. One lesson is that the carefully crafted legal strategy has been able to assert a strong civil rights politics and still win, despite the growing conservatism and institutional racism of the U.S. legal system. We've also shown that an unapologetic antiracist politics is essential to our success in recruiting thousands of Bus Riders Union members within the urban working classes of color.

Where do we go from here?

One response to the victory has been "So you won at the Supreme Court!? So then it's all over, right?" Hardly.

Immediately following news of the decision, BRU members Eric Mann, Woodrow Coleman, and Ted Robertson met on Monday with MTA CEO Roger Snoble and his second-in-commands at the agency. Using interpretations and accounting inventions straight from the Twilight Zone, they claimed that the MTA was in full compliance with the Consent Decree requirements and that not one single bus was further required! So here we go again. The Supreme Court decision will no doubt encourage much stronger court rulings from the lower federal courts that we now return to. Nonetheless, MTA corporate legal teams are preparing to fight us for every dime. And weĠre in a race against time, for they are trying to spend out hundreds of millions of dollars on the Pasadena and East Side rail projects before we can convince the federal courts to take the aggressive step to actually sequester specific MTA funds for new buses.

The punch line: While the Supreme Court victory will be of critical help to us, actually winning the hundreds of millions of dollars and the hundreds of new expansion buses will require much more legal work, more in-the-street actions, more organizers on the buses, more monitoring of bus overcrowding. Please call us to make a credit card donation to the Bus Riders Union, send a check, or make a monthly pledge of support. For those of you in the Los Angeles region, you have been invited to our 13th Annual Political Party on Saturday, May 4 and purchasing $100 donor tickets to attend that event is the most important way you can support this work. (The real cost of the event to us is $50.) For those of you not living in the region, or not attending, or who can afford an additional contribution-please make a donation or monthly pledge right now.

Your support is critical to our ability to turn this legal victory into real buses, real jobs, real dollars. The stakes are quite high-compliance with the Consent Decree will result in more than 700 new, clean fuel expansion buses, thousands of new unionized jobs for drivers and mechanics, at a cost of over 1.5 billion dollars over the next decade. Credit card donations: call 213-387-2800. Mail checks to Bus Riders Union; 3780 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010

MTA compliance with the Consent Decree requires:

1. MTA must stop the Eastside Light Rail, Pasadena Gold Line, and San Fernando BRT. Until MTA can demonstrate to the courts that it can afford to meet all provisions of the Consent Decree, MTA must agree to a moratorium on all rail projects. This means waiting for the Consent Decree's Special Master Donald Bliss to rule on the MTA's outstanding obligations under the Consent Decree before committing funds to any projects such as BRT and rail construction.

2. MTA must buy at least 135 new buses immediately. The purchase of these buses is needed to comply with the Consent Decree's bus overcrowding deadline of June 2000, mandating that no more than an average of 11 people are standing on MTA buses.

3. MTA must protect funds for at least 100 additional buses for overcrowding reduction. These buses are needed to meet the overcrowding deadline of June 2002, by which time no more than an average of 8 people are to be standing on MTA buses.

4. MTA must protect funds for at least 500 more buses for new service routes. The Consent Decree calls for an expansion of bus routes to schools, jobs, hospitals, and recreation. This includes the implementation of the entire Rapid Bus Program.