Abstract: A compartment type, hollow vehicle seat arm rest having a pivoted, latchable lid in which the entire arm rest and latched lid can be raised to a stored position rotated past absolute vertical. The latch is a flat, spring loaded plunger that moves back and forth within a latch housing that is molded entirely within the thickness of the lid itself. A thin, flat flip lever is freely pivoted against the back of the housing, trapped between a notched undersurface of the plunger and a flat bottom wall of the latch housing. When the arm rest is raised, the flip lever moves past vertical and falls away from the flat housing bottom wall and into the notched undersurface of the plunger, blocking it from being pushed in to unlatch the lid.