NO IMMEDIATE COMMENT HERE

Members of the City Commission, their attorneys, attorneys for the bus boycotters and the bus company management had no immediate comment on the decision.

ACTION IS UNANIMOUS

Today's Supreme Court action was unanimous.

The tribunal issued a brief order which said "the motion to affirm is granted and the judgement is affirmed."

The order cited the Supreme Courts' 1954 decision in the public school segregation cases and two later orders striking down race segregation in public parks and public golf links.

The special court had ruled that enforced segregation on Montgomery buses violates the Federal Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection of law.

By affirming the special court decision the Supreme Court left no doubt that it was outlawing racial segregation on all bus systems.

Some question had arisen earlier this year when the high tribunal simply dismissed an appeal from another decision overturning a South Carolina segregation law. That left the decision in effect but led to confusion as to the Supreme Court's intent.

Today's order ends the confusion.

AUTHORITY QUESTIONED

In their appeal, the city commissioners contended the special court lacked authority to act. They argued it should have dismissed the complaint in the case filed on behalf of Negro bus riders, or at least should have stayed action pending disposition of a similar suit filed by Negroes in Alabama State courts.

The State Commission appeal said the special court should not have ruled on the Alabama bus segregation law.

"The evidence is undisputed," this appeal said, "that the commission has never attempted or threatened to enforce the statutes and ordinances relating to segregation of races on buses operated by Montgomery City Lines, Inc."

Negroes in Montgomery have conducted a lengthy boycott of buses as a protest against state and city segregation laws.

The special court, in explaining its decision against city and state bus segregation laws recalled that the Supreme Court in ruling against segregation in public school had repudiate the doctrine of separate but equal facilities "in the area where it first developed, that is in the field of public education."

The special court added:

"On the same day the Supreme Court made clear that its ruling was not limited to that field when it remanded 'for consideration in the light of the segregation cases . . . and conditions that now prevail' a case involving the rights of Negroes to use the recreational facilities of (Louisville) city parks."

The special court cited other Supreme Court actions and continued:

"We cannot in good conscience perform our duty as judges blindly folowing the precedent of Plessy vs. Ferguson (an 1896 Supreme Court decision approving separate but equal railroad facilities) when our study leaves us in complete agreement with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Courts opinion . . . that the separate but equal doctrine can no longer be safely allowed as a correct statement of the law.

NO RATIONAL BASIS

"In fact, we think Plessy vs. Ferguson has been impliedly, though not explicitly, overruled, and that under the later decisions, there is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be validly applied to public carrier transportation within the City of Montgomery and its police jurisdiction. The application of that doctrine cannot be justified as a proper execution of the state police power."

Judge Richard T. Rives of the U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans and U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., of Montgomery signed the special court's majority opinion. U.S. District Judge Seybourn H. Lynne of Birmingham dissented.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court opinion referred to by the special court, struck down a South Carolina State law requiring motor carriers to segregate Negro and white passengers. An appeal by a Columbia, S. C., bus company was dismissed by the Supreme Court last April 23.

FILED FEB.1

The suit that the Supreme Court ruled on today was filed in federal court in Montgomery Feb. 1 in the names of five Negro women. Later one of them said she did not know what she was signing and her name was dropped.

That was the day a second small dynamite bomb exploded harmlessly near the home of a Negro leader in the boycott. Several such incidents but no open violence or injuries have been reported during the boycott.

The boycott began last Dec. 5, the day 42-year-old seamstress Mrs. Rosa Parks was fined $14 for refusing to move to the rear, or Negro-designated portion, of a city bus on Dec. 1.

It flared to national and international attention in February with the arrest on charges of conducting an illegal boycott of 90 Negroes, including King and a number of other ministers.

King was convicted and fined $500 costs. His case is on appeal to the Alabama Court of Appeals and the other cases have been postponed pending outcome.

The Negro women's suit was heard May 11.

The judges ruled against the laws on June 5 and on June 19 they issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of state laws or city ordinances for bus segregation. This was suspended during the appeal period.

Bus company officials said Manager J. H. Bagley was the only one authorized to comment on the situation now, and he was out of town. The company was estimated last week on the basis of city figures to have lost revenue of about $750,000 because of the boycott up to now.