Rights Violation or a Complete Jerk?

[Roland]

Yes. I still think he is a douchebag/ass/whatever. However, that in itself is not illegal.

He was being difficult, in a situation that we would not have followed suit in. I reserve judgment as to whether he's truly an ass or not about it, given that I was not there to witness it, and that the situation has not been resolved. If, upon winning his case, he goes on to file multiple lawsuits, etc., then yes, I will agree he's a complete jerk. If, on the other hand, he merely uses it as a building block for something greater, a noble goal, then I will not consider him as such.

In other words, not only do his actions up to now affect my judgment, but also his actions in the future. Also, I reiterate that it's a little difficult to decide just how "bad" he truly is without having been witness to it all. From the sound of it, he did no wrong, at worst brushing off a store clerk and their company's policies. On the other hand, he may be relaying the story through rose-colored glasses for all we know, as Bolty (and probably others) have pointed out.

To make my point that I raised in my previous post, to which you replied, I was stating that the act of refusing to move from a designated point on the bus went against that bus company's policy. In defying it, she was defying policy, and perhaps even the "law" back then. Was there any true harm in being forced to sit in the back versus the front? Not really, when you think about it. It's the underlying issues of race and discrimination that made it a big deal, not the action itself. Likewise, defying a store's policy to check your shopping back, for whatever reason, without suspicion of theft is a small matter. At least that's how I look at it. I'm not trying to downplay one of the greatest moments in civil rights history, merely to seperate what made it so significant, instead of someone simply being a jerk.