High Court: Gender segregation legal on Israeli buses - but only with passenger consent

In response to petition submitted against ultra-Orthodox Mehadrin line nearly three years ago, Israel's highest legal body rules that coercion of such practice is illegal: 'Have we returned to the days of Rosa Parks?'

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"The High Court of Justice ruled Thursday that public bus companies could continue the practice of gender segregation on dozens of lines serving the ultra-Orthodox sector, as long as there is no coercion or violence involved.

"A public transportation operator, like any other person, does not have the right to order, request or tell women where they may sit simply because they are women," Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein wrote in his ruling. "They must sit wherever they like."

"As I now read over these lines emphasizing this I am astounded that there was even a need to write them in the year 2010," he added. "Have the days of Rosa Parks, the African American woman who collapsed the racist segregation on an Alabama bus in 1955 returned?"

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/high-court-gender-segregation-legal-on-israeli-buses-but-only-with-passenger-consent-1.335567

Along those routes there are buses for the religious and those for the secular. They are clearly marked. The issue is can the seating pattern being enforced on the religious buses by the transportation company and the court's answer is no, its voluntary. It also sidesteps the problem.

Sometimes women get on the front of buses marked for the religious. They are met with at least verbal abuse and at times it has gotten physical. A few spectacular incidents have made the media. This ruling puts the Haredi on notice that physical harassment is illegal. My crystal ball says that the number of confrontations will rise, there will be some injuries (not just to women) and the government will step in and crackdown. In the longer term, I tend to think the Haredi will end up running their own bus service of some sort.