Los Angles Times, "Suit Alleges Bay Area Transit Agency Runs an 'Unequal System"

          Minority bus riders and community groups from Alameda and Contra Costa counties filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday accusing the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission of maintaining a "separate and unequal transit system" that favors white suburban commuters.
         The Bay Area lawsuit alleges that the commission has disproportionately funded Caltrain and BART -- rail services used predominantly by white suburbanites with relatively high incomes -- while under-funding the East Bay's AC Transit bus system, used mainly by low-income minority city dwellers.
          According to the lawsuit -- filed on behalf of three minority riders from East Oakland and Richmond, the nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment, and Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 192 - the commission has channeled a per-person public subsidy of $2.78 to AC Transit riders, $6.14 to BART riders, and $13.79 to Caltrain riders.
          "The numbers add up to racial discrimination in violation of the [U.S.] Constitution," said Bill Lann Lee, a lead attorney on the case, who as a Los Angeles civil rights attorney in the 1990s helped press the case against the MTA.
          The lawsuit seeks a "fair and equitable share" of funding "to accord inner-city riders equal dignity with white suburban riders," said Lee, who served as assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are seeking to pursue the case -- filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco -- as a class-action lawsuit.
          Commission ridership surveys over the years indicate it intentionally discriminated against minorities in violation of the U.S. Constitution, the suit alleges. However, even if the discrimination was not intentional, the suit maintains, it resulted in disparate delivery of services along racial and ethnic lines -- also a federal law violation.