Represented by Constance Rice and others from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, LCSC, BRU, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates were able first to obtain an injunction preventing LACMTA from eliminating the monthly pass in 1994. In 1996 after a high-profile media and grassroots campaign against LACMTA’s policies of “transit racism,” LCSC, BRU et al. agreed to sign with LACMTA a Title VI consent decree.[9][8]

The plaintiffs argued that LACMTA was using disproportionately more of its federal funds on the suburban-oriented rail service and its wealthier, whiter ridership, at the same time as it was spending disproportionately less on the bus system and its much larger, lower-income ridership, predominantly made up of people of color. As of July 2007, 17% of LACMTA’s rail riders were white classified as white non-Hispanics. In contrast, only 10% of bus riders were classified as white non-Hispanics.[11][12] Martin Wachs and Richard Berk of UCLA, and James Moore II of USC were among the professors of transportation, planning and statistics who provided expert reports and other assistance to the plaintiffs.[13] The former chief financial officer of LACMTA’s predecessor agency, Thomas Rubin, also provided key assistance to the plaintiffs. LACMTA agreed to settle the case on the eve of the trial, “when it faced extensive public disclosure and media coverage of its discriminatory, inefficient, and environmentally destructive transportation policies.”[8]

The consent decree required LACMTA to:[8]

retain the unlimited monthly-use pass and reduce it from $49 to $42; reduce the biweekly pass from $26.50 to $21; and to create a new weekly pass for $11

purchase 102 buses to ease existing overcrowding on the buses

commit to reducing overcrowding levels by specified goals and specified times, working under a court-appointed Special Master with BRU in a Joint Working Group over the life of the decree

create new bus services designed to connect people of color and the poor to job and medical sites.

The LACMTA and BRU disagreed many times whether the LACTMA was in compliance with the new rules. Over the course of the decree, it appealed rulings based on the consent decree numerous times, including a final appeal that it took to the Supreme Court, which was rejected in March 2002.[14] In 2006, as the decree was set to expire, BRU et al. filed an appeal to extend it, but it was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009.[15]