Gray’s strategy in filing Browder v. Gayle was careful and specific. He chose to file in federal rather than state court because the federal court had jurisdiction over the constitutional question and was not subject to the delay and obstruction that state courts under Alabama’s control could apply. He structured the complaint around the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, drawing on the reasoning of Brown v. Board of Education and asking the court to extend it to public transit.
He consulted with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall — two of the most accomplished civil rights lawyers in the country — in developing the case. The collaboration connected the Montgomery action to the national civil rights legal infrastructure.
The defendants in the case were the public officials responsible for enforcing Montgomery’s segregated bus system: Mayor W.A. Gayle, city commissioners Clyde Sellers and Frank Parks, police chief Goodwyn Ruppenthal, and others. The Alabama Public Service Commission was also named. The presence of city officials as defendants meant the case was directly attacking the governmental enforcement of segregation, not just seeking accommodation from a private employer.
## The Three-Judge Panel
Because the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of a state statute, federal procedural rules required that it be heard by a three-judge panel rather than a single district court judge. This was a specific provision of federal law designed to ensure that constitutional challenges to state laws received additional judicial scrutiny.
The three-judge panel that heard the case consisted of Richard Rives, Frank Minis Johnson, and Seybourn Harris Lynne. Rives and Johnson were both Southerners — Rives was from Montgomery itself — but both had demonstrated a willingness to apply the constitutional law as they understood it rather than simply protect the racial status quo. Lynne was the dissenter.