On Sunday, Justice Kochava Levy of the Tel Aviv District Court ruled that Egged Ta’avura, a subsidiary company of Egged, must pay 120,000 NIS in damages to Mor Simhi, a teenage girl who was told by a bus driver that she was not allowed to board his bus due to her pants being too short.

The driver, Yuval Avital, a religious man was driving the route between Jerusalem and Kochav Yaakov, a national-religious community in the Binyamin region when the incident occurred.

Kikar Shabbos reported that the girl approached the bus and attempted to board when Avital refused to let her on the bus claiming that she wasn’t allowed on dressed the way that she was. The next day the girl got on the same bus and had the same driver. When she asked him why he refused to let her on the day before he replied “You were wearing the shortest pants in the world.”

Justice Levy accepted the version of events provided by the girl and added that a bus driver was not entitled to impose his personal views on travelers but rather must provide his service without discrimination. Justice Levy then ruled that since Egged Ta’avura attempted to influence the proceedings of the case, that they should compensate the girl by paying her 120,000 NIS.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)