Judge Lynne, in his dissent, argued that Brown applied specifically to schools and that extending it to public transit exceeded the scope of what the Supreme Court had decided. He believed the states retained authority over public accommodations and that the federal courts should not read Brown as a sweeping mandate for desegregating all public institutions.
Rives and Johnson disagreed. Their majority opinion found that the constitutional principle was broader than its specific school application — that the Equal Protection Clause’s prohibition on state-enforced racial hierarchy applied to public life generally, and that a city’s bus system was as much a matter of public life as its schools.
When the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the Browder ruling in November 1956, it endorsed this reasoning without requiring further briefing or oral argument — a choice that indicated the Court found the legal analysis straightforwardly correct rather than requiring extended consideration.
## The Specific Act of Ending Segregation
The legal end of bus segregation in Montgomery was not instantaneous upon the Supreme Court’s November 1956 affirmance. The procedural steps that followed took additional weeks.
After the Supreme Court’s November 13 affirmance, the city and state filed a petition for rehearing — a request for the Court to reconsider. On December 17, 1956, the Court denied the rehearing petition. This cleared the way for the ruling to take effect.
On December 20, 1956, federal marshals served the ruling on Mayor W.A. Gayle of Montgomery. This was the formal moment at which the ruling became operative in the city. The Montgomery bus boycott, which had been running since December 5, 1955 — 381 days — was called off. The next morning, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Glenn Smiley, and Ralph Abernathy boarded a Montgomery city bus and sat in the front seats.