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?"