EDITORIAL: How not to run a bus company for open-minded college kids

The question is, who would want to ride their buses?

In a lawsuit filed Monday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan presents compelling evidence that a bus company that shuttles between Chicago and downstate college campuses discriminates against students — Chinese and Jewish, most notably — based on race and ethnicity. Madigan appears to have assembled a credible case that Suburban Express is guilty of state civil rights violations, consumer fraud and deceptive business practices.

If so, the bus company faces hefty fines or worse.

But unless our faith in the decency of America’s young people is misplaced, we predict Suburban Express has a more immediate problem. Once its thousands of student customers read the attorney general’s 39-page complaint, posted online, the company may find that its buses are running with a much larger number of empty seats.

We support laws that prohibit discrimination, and so of course we favor the kind of suit Madigan filed Tuesday. But we’re firm believers, as well, in the power of the marketplace to mete out justice. Just sit back and watch.

Why would anybody ride a bus operated by a company that allegedly has gone out of its way, in the words of the suit, to “directly exclude or deny accommodation” to Asian students? Or that allegedly has declined to serve North Shore zip codes thought to have larger Jewish populations? (Derisively called the “land with no ham.”)

Why would anybody ride a bus operated by a company that sets up web pages to rip customers — sometimes by name — in lengthy and belittling ways? The head of the Suburban Express, or one of his co-workers, allegedly mocked one customer as an “immature little a—–.” He reportedly called another customer “a pushy little Chinese International student with a fragile ego.” He is said to have questioned whether a third customer was “living in a mental hospital.”

In yet another case, according to Madigan’s complaint, one of the defendants posted a Google Map photo of a customer’s apparent childhood home and asked, “What happened here?”

That would be our question, too. What happened here? How did anybody nowadays, regardless of his prejudices, think this was a smart way to run a business?

We’ll just have to see how that works out.

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