Trump administration asks judge to halt first reparations program for Black people in US

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The Justice Department is seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging a Chicago suburb’s housing reparations program for Black residents, arguing it is “racially discriminatory” and unconstitutional.

The city council in Evanston, Ill., earmarked $10 million in revenue generated from cannabis sales taxes in 2019 for a first-of-its-kind local reparations program for Black residents and their direct descendants who suffered housing discrimination due to the city’s policies and practices between 1919 and 1969.

The Restorative Housing Program, implemented in 2021, offers those families grants of up to $25,000 that can be used to make a down payment on a home, repair property or pay interest and late penalties on property within the city.

Those who can prove they were harmed by the city’s policies and practices after 1969, when the city banned housing discrimination, may also qualify.

The Justice Department has alleged that the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act because it is “not narrowly tailored to remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination” and public money is distributed solely based on race.

“There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “Simply handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer. It is race discrimination, pure and simple. And it is illegal.”

A group of individuals whose ancestors lived in Evanston during the same 20th-century period but do not identify as Black or African American sued the city in 2024, claiming they were unlawfully excluded from receiving benefits.

A federal judge in Illinois denied the city’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit in March. The Justice Department said it launched an investigation into the program that same month and accused the city of refusing to cooperate.

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss (D) defended the reparations program in a Tuesday statement to Evanston Now, saying the city was reviewing the DOJ’s filing.

“We stand behind our first-in-the-nation reparations program, are confident in its constitutionality, and look forward to defending it in court.”

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