July 12, 2025
A racial discrimination lawsuit towards an unnamed Jefferson Strains bus driver is now shifting ahead.
A racial discrimination lawsuit towards an unnamed Jefferson Strains bus driver in North Dakota is shifting ahead after the Minnesota Division of Human Rights discovered possible trigger to assist passenger Xavier Davis’s claims stemming from a 2023 incident aboard the bus.
In response to The Minnesota Star-Tribune, 4 months after the incident occurred, Davis initiated a criticism to the state human rights division. Per a memo launched earlier in 2025 by Commissioner Rebecca Lucero, the discrimination lawsuit towards Jefferson Bus Strains, which mentions the aforementioned driver as a John Doe, has her blessing to maneuver ahead.
In her memorandum, Lucero stated that the driving force failed to determine any cause for instructing Davis and one other Black male passenger to maneuver to the again of the bus that was not racially discriminatory.
Her investigation additionally found that in distinction to the 2 Black males, the driving force allowed white passengers to take a seat anyplace they appreciated, however pressured these two Black males to the again of the bus.
Moreover, the investigation concluded that the driving force’s directions to the Black males that firm coverage was for passengers to board from the again of the bus to the entrance was a contradiction of Jefferson Strains’ precise boarding coverage and that the driving force assumed the boys have been touring collectively, regardless of their tickets to 2 completely different locations.
The motive force additionally claimed in a subsequent investigation performed by the bus line that the passengers had an aroma of marijuana, and as soon as the scenario between the three males turned contentious, he threatened to name the police on the 2 males.
Of their investigation, the corporate solely reprimanded the driving force for failing to comply with the corporate’s boarding coverage and didn’t handle the discrimination considerations.
Though the bus firm was working in North Dakota on the time of the incident, it’s based mostly in Minnesota, and thus falls beneath the jurisdiction of Minnesota state officers.
Davis’ civil lawsuit, just lately filed in Hennepin County District Courtroom, attracts comparisons to the remedy of Rosa Parks, who famously refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus, sparking the Civil Rights Motion of the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties.
Davis is looking for damages pertaining to being denied full and equal use of public lodging in his lawsuit, and his lawyer, Sam Savage, instructed the outlet that Davis and the bus firm had been in mediation to resolve their dispute, however indicated to the outlet that the corporate has been lower than coöperative.
“They only are unwilling to do the precise factor,” Savage instructed the Minnesota Star-Tribune.
In a separate assertion, Savage invoked Parks’ 1955 protest to KARE 11.
“In 1955 Rosa Parks took a stand and we aren’t going again, not ever once more and they’re refusing to take accountability and the one factor we are able to do is make it proper by awarding him full cash justice. That’s the one justice out there,” Savage stated.
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