African American Bus Drivers File Discrimination Suit Against Pace Suburban Bus

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Two former employees of Pace Suburban Bus have filed suit against the transportation company and an individual manager over claims that the defendants discriminated against African American employees and executed unfair disciplinary action against them. Both plaintiffs worked for the defendants as bus drivers and claim they were “subject to heightened scrutiny and held to different standards than non-African Americans,” which they say eventually resulted in their unlawful termination.

The first plaintiff claims he finished one of his shifts and parked his bus according to Pace instructions, but upon returning for his next shift, was called into a meeting with the individual defendant and told that he had hit the bus parked in front of him. The plaintiff denied the accusation but was terminated despite a lack of evidence, including video footage or photos of the “damage” caused by the alleged accident.

The second plaintiff says she was terminated after supposedly failing to report an accident that she claims never happened. After taking the matter to arbitration, her termination was found to have been “not credible and completely unsupported by the evidence,” and she was reinstated, according to the complaint. She claims that after she returned to work, she was subjected to continuous discriminatory treatment, including being forced to drive a type of bus for which she was inadequately trained and being assigned vehicles that were difficult to navigate out of the garage or were parked far away. The suit argues that the defendants were “setting her up for failure” and she was eventually terminated again for supposedly neglecting to report another accident – an accusation she claims is false.

On top of that, the second plaintiff attests that during her training, a Caucasian employee was late for work and hit a construction sign with his bus after ignoring the trainer’s instructions – actions that should have resulted in immediate termination per Pace’s training policy – and was not disciplined or terminated.