Resource: Crossroad Blues: The MTA Consent Decree and Just Transportation,

This chapter describes how a team of US civil-rights attorneys worked with grassroots organisations to file and win a landmark environmental-justice class action against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The plaintiffs alleged that MTA operated separate and unequal bus and rail systems that discriminated against bus riders who were disproportionately low-income people of color. The parties settled the case in 1996 through a court-ordered Consent Decree in which MTA agreed to make investments in the bus system that would total over $2 billion, making it the largest civil-rights settlement ever.