Bias at the A.C. bus depot?

ARE MINORITY-OWNED buses bound for Atlantic City casinos the victims of racial profiling by New Jersey bus inspectors?

Six current and former bus companies and owners - five in Philadelphia and one in Norristown - say they are, in an ongoing civil-rights lawsuit filed in 2005 against the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

This month U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Simandle is expected to decide whether the complex, eight-count case will go to trial in U.S. District Court in Camden.

For years Charles Major, of Major Tours Inc., the lead plaintiff, said that the bus inspectors cited only African-American- owned buses on Friday nights after they pulled into docks at the Showboat Hotel and Casino.

The buses were stopped and inspected - not cursory inspections with orders to fix a minor problem, but "Level One" inspections, the highest level, taking up to four hours for a one-hour inspection, he added.

When a driver couldn't immediately adjust a brake, or repair a minor problem, buses were then impounded, all "without just cause," the lawsuit said.

Afterward, the bus owners were forced to pay "unwarranted, illegal and substantial amounts for unnecessary towing, repairs, substitute bus services, storage fees, fines and court fees," according to the lawsuit.

By 2005, Major and others were frustrated and fed up, after trying since the late 1990s to resolve their differences with the state.

Jamm Tours owner Glen Ragin said he quickly recognized the actions as racial discrimination.

As a boy in 1952, he had helped integrate an elementary school in South Carolina, a civil-rights account memorialized by Ossie Davis in the 2007 play "The People of Clarendon County."

"Down there in Clarendon County, you knew it was racial," he said. "Here, they hide it."

So the bus owners sued the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT); its Motor Vehicle Commission; Vincent Schultze, then-chief of the Commercial Bus Inspection Unit, and five others.

The state claimed in court records that there was no disparate treatment of the bus owners.

When asked about the case recently, Leland Moore, a spokesman for the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, cited a Nov. 9, 2009, memo filed in federal court, in which the state is seeking dismissal of the suit on technical legal grounds, including an expired statute of limitations.

In the memo, the state argued that the bus owners broadly allege ongoing violations of their civil rights, but fail to cite dates of alleged violations.

They also failed to allege facts showing a right to relief for a civil-rights violation or a conspiracy.

In court records, the defense team, which includes the A.G.'s office and Dilworth Paxson LLP, also argued that federal court has no jurisdiction in the matter, because the state has "sovereign immunity" under federal law, which means a state cannot be sued by citizens in other states or countries.

The bus owners' lawyers contend that neither New Jersey nor its employees are immune from a suit in federal court under the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.

Whistle-blower Wilfred Grotz, a retired bus inspector, and others, say they witnessed the discrimination, offering an "ugly and shocking portrait" of the inner workings of the Commercial Bus Inspection Unit.

Grotz confirmed that African-American bus operators were treated more harshly than operators of white-owned buses.

In a deposition, Grotz said under oath that inspections managers were "out to get black buses" and "minority church buses."

NJDOT's principal inspector, Michael Calorel, allegedly said

" 'N-----s run junk,' " referring to minority-owned buses, Grotz said.

Another NJDOT inspector's favorite saying was: " 'Do your work with vigor, and be replaced with a n-----,' " he said.

In a deposition, Calorel admitted that he had used racial slurs on "bad days."

"We all do it once in awhile," Calorel said.

"I'm not an angel. If someone says they didn't, they'd be a liar."

Inspections became so frequent in the late '90s and early '00s that, Major said, 31 minority-owned bus companies hired attorney Robert Sugarman, who has since died, to seek inspection standards, only to find that inspectors had wide discretion.

Then the owners bought new, or nearly new, buses that cost up to $350,000 each, but they were still subject to the same intense inspections and violations.

In 2003, one bus was impounded for 2 1/2 years, costing the owner $56,000 in fees, fines and storage, by tow truck operators from Jimmy's Lakeside Garage, in Hammonton - 30 miles outside of Atlantic City.

The bus was eventually returned to its owner but the dispute is still pending in the lawsuit.

Meantime, the 31 companies tried to get injunctive relief, Major said.

"The more we complained, the more the inspections were stepped up," he added.

State officials referred the complaints to Schultze, of the bus-inspection unit, and others - the subjects of the complaints - for response, according to the lawsuit.

The inspection results were fed into a federal data base, and those companies with numerous inspections were more likely to be reinspected, according to the lawsuit.

In 2003, Sureway, a minority bus company that owned two buses, was inspected 52 times, but Academy, a white-owned, 400-bus company, was inspected twice, according to the lawsuit.

So Major and a handful of owners changed lawyers and hired attorney Yvette C. Sterling, of Burlington, N.J.

Sterling engaged the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP), which enlisted the Dechert law firm, before filing the eight-count lawsuit in 2005.

In recent filings, the plaintiffs' lawyers argued that New Jersey authorities engaged in a "coverup" of past discriminatory practices - until a federal magistrate judge ordered the state records to be produced.

In a document that had been withheld, Frederick Taylor, a NJDOT affirmative-action specialist, found in 2003, that Schultze and others routinely engaged in racial remarks about minority staffers and bus companies. Taylor found that Schultze:

* Called his partially blind secretary "a one-eyed n-----";

* Accused an African-American employee of practicing voodoo and having "blood and feathers" in his car.

* Rejected Jeffrey Boyd, a qualified African-American for an inspector's job, because of race.

* Stridently inspected minority-owned companies while white-owned companies received special treatment.

In response to Schultze's alleged racial slur, his African-American secretary called him "a racist pig," the investigator found.

In Taylor's 2003 investigation, retired bus inspector Walter Ricks confirmed that he had heard his supervisors making racial remarks and had witnessed the disparity in inspections of black and white bus companies.

Grotz concurred.

Bus inspectors "knew they would find a defect that these bus companies couldn't fix on the spot like a bus from [a white-owned bus company]," said Grotz.

"Could be a simple thing like a light or brake adjustment that one of the other companies would just, you know, fix and go. But if it was a minority-owned bus, they didn't have nobody to do it. Didn't have a big fleet," he added.

"They were pretty much guaranteed" impoundment, said Grotz, and bus inspectors "felt it was a feather in their cap, the impounds."

As a result, the bus owners say they suffered a severe loss of revenue, especially when buses were put out of service for long periods.

What's more, minority customers also suffered, Major said. In one instance, he recalled, bus inspectors "wouldn't even allow us to take the customers' coats and put them on another bus to take them home."

To win back customers, bus owners sharply slashed ticket prices and increased promotions.

But it was too late for bus owners who had lost their businesses. Many went bankrupt.

"This is the American dream, to start a company, do what you need to do, and then pass it on to your children or grandchildren," said Major.

"But then because of the bus inspections, we lost business, or went out of business."