69-11-208. Classes of persons who may receive free transportation. (1) The persons to whom free tickets, free passes, free transportation, and discriminating reduced rates may be issued, furnished, or given are the following:

(a) the officers, agents, employees, attorneys, physicians, and surgeons of the common carriers of passengers and the officers and employees of other common carriers upon the exchange of passes or tickets;

(b) the families of the persons included in subsection (1)(a);

(c) the general officers of any common carriers;

(d) employees of sleeping car and express car companies and linemen of telegraph and telephone companies, railway mail service employees, post-office inspectors, customs inspectors, immigration inspectors, news salespersons on trains, and baggage agents;

(e) persons injured in wrecks and physicians and nurses attending the persons;

(f) passengers traveling with the object of providing relief in cases of railroad accident, general epidemic, pestilence, or other calamity;

(g) necessary caretakers of livestock, vegetables, and fruit, including return transportation to forwarding stations;

(h) the officers, agents, or regularly accredited representatives of labor organizations composed wholly of employees of railway companies;

(i) inmates of homes for the reform or rescue of the disadvantaged, including those about to enter and those returning home after discharge, and boards of managers, including officers and superintendents, of the homes;

(j) superannuated and pensioned employees and members of their families and surviving spouses of the members;

(k) employees crippled and disabled in the service of the common carrier of passengers;

(l) police officers and firefighters of any city, wearing the insignia of their office, within the limits of the city;

(m) ministers of religion, newspaper employees in exchange for advertising, traveling secretaries of a YMCA or YWCA, inmates of hospitals and charitable and eleemosynary institutions, and persons exclusively engaged in charitable and eleemosynary work;

(n) indigent, destitute, and homeless persons while being transported by charitable societies or hospitals and necessary agents and employees in the transportation;

(o) school children going to and from public or parochial schools;

(p) military personnel going to or coming from institutions for their keeping;

(q) executive, judicial, or legislative officers of this state, including the members of the faculty of the different educational institutions of this state;

(r) the furloughed employees of common carriers authorized by 69-11-207 to issue free transportation and members of their families;

(s) persons who have become disabled or infirm in the service of a common carrier or members of families of persons who have become disabled or infirm in the service of any common carrier;

(t) families of persons killed and surviving spouses who have not remarried and minor children during minority of persons who died while in the service of any common carrier;

(u) witnesses attending any legal investigation in which the carrier is interested;

(v) the remains of persons who died while in the employment of a common carrier; and

(w) former employees traveling for the purpose of entering the service of any common carrier.

(2) The provisions of 69-11-207 and this section may not be construed to prohibit the interchange of passes for the persons to whom free tickets, free passes, or free transportation may be furnished or given under the provisions of this section. The provisions of 69-11-207 or this section may not be construed to invalidate any existing contract between a street railway company and a city when a condition of a franchise grant requires the furnishing of transportation to police officers, firefighters, and officers while in the performance of official duties.