Lawsuit For Harassment On Mehadrin Bus

The fight over mehadrin bus lines has been going on for a while, with the Supreme Court finally deciding a few months ago to technically allow the mehadrin arrangement as long as it is completely voluntary and not enforced on anybody.

Basically, anybody can sit where they want, and if women want to sit in the back of the bus, that is fine. However, nobody can stop a woman form sitting in the front section of the bus, and nobody can stop men from sitting in the back section. As well, any bus that is defined as mehadrin must have signs posted to the effect that people can sit wherever they want and it is illegal to harass them in any way.

That means there is no such thing as mehadrin bus lines.

However, with bus lines continuing to be defined as mehadrin, it leaves open for vigilante enforcement, despite that aspect being against the law. Passengers who suffer from harassment have the ability to complain, but most usually do not, and then there is the matter of proving it, which is probably not going to be easy. From the opposite perspective, people have the ability to file fictitious complaints and if the courts and Transportation Ministry take them without asking for too much proof, such fictitious complaints can cause serious problems for the mehadrin lines.

There is now a new threat to the mehadrin bus lines. Instead of just complaining about them, people are starting to sue. And they are not just suing the bus company, as in the past, but are now suing the bus driver who dares to tell a female passenger to sit in the back of the bus.

Bechadrei is reporting about a lawsuit that was filed recently against an Egged bus driver. The claim is that the driver instructed her to sit in the back section of the bus. She is suing the driver for 30,000 NIS, as she refuses to be treated like a second class citizen, and his instructions made her feel degraded, insulted and angered. This happened when she got on the Rehovot-Bnei Braq bus, and as she was about to sit down, in the front, the haredi driver told her to move to the back.

She claims that when she informed the driver that he is not allowed to tell her that as it is against the Supreme Court decision, he responded by saying that it is not the Supreme Court that sets the rules, but it is the rabbonim and the people. She also says that she overheard two other passengers talking in Yiddish saying that  she needs to be dealt with by the mishmeret ha'tzniyus and she is causing a chillul hashem.

This specific bus line has been the subject of numerous complaints and has been singled out in the Supreme Court as an example of the harassment supposedly directed at those unwilling to follow the unwritten mehadrin rules.

Did it really happen as described? Is she making it up, or embellishing the story? If she is suing the bus driver, she is definitely going to need to prove her claim.