First was the scope of common carrier obligations. Rockwell’s instruction was that transit companies could not exclude “respectable” Black passengers, with the respectability standard defined in terms of sobriety, behavior, and disease. This left open the question of who determined respectability, and it left in place the assumption that Black passengers had to earn their place on the car in a way that white passengers did not. The standard was applied asymmetrically: it was never proposed that white passengers needed to prove they were sober, well-behaved, and free from disease before boarding.
Second was the relationship between company policy and employee conduct. The verdict held the company liable for its agents’ actions. But companies that formally desegregated their policies could — and sometimes did — see their employees continue to enforce exclusionary practices informally. The gap between written policy and actual practice was a recurring problem in the years after the Jennings verdict, as community members who attempted to board newly desegregated cars encountered conductors who had not received, or did not follow, the company’s updated instructions.
Third was the question of what legal rule, if any, bound all companies equally. Without a statute or a high court ruling, each company remained a potential litigation target, and each victory had to be achieved separately. The Legal Rights Association’s strategy of pursuing line-by-line change through litigation and organizing was a rational response to this constraint, but it was slow and expensive, and it depended on continuing to find plaintiffs willing to undergo the physical and legal ordeal that Elizabeth Jennings had undergone.