DOJ seeks to join lawsuit against Evanston's reparations program

The Department of Justice has claimed that a first-in-the-nation reparations program for Black residents amounts to illegal race-based discrimination because it doesn’t help people who aren’t Black.

The Justice Department is asking to join a lawsuit that seeks to block a program from the city of Evanston, Illinois, which has made $25,000 payments to residents who were at least 18 years old between 1919 and 1969, as well as “direct descendants” of Black people who lived in the city in that time frame.

A class-action lawsuit from conservative activist group Judicial Watch on behalf of a group of non-Black residents argued the program is “purposefully and intentionally discriminating” against them.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department now wants to join the case, alleging violations of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act.

“There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct resources to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods,” the Justice Department’s civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon 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.”

The Chicago suburb made international headlines when it passed the first reparations law in the country in 2019, an effort that followed decades of organizing among Black Americans and ancestors of enslaved people across the country.

Evanston identified discriminatory housing policies in the 20th century as the “strongest case for reparations,” with funding from $10 million in tax revenue from the sale of recreational marijuana after it was legalized in early 2020.

The committee has since disbursed more than $6 million to ancestors and direct descendants of Evanston’s Black community, according to the city.

The Trump administration opened an investigation into the program earlier this year and the city “refused to cooperate,” according to the Justice Department.

A motion to join the case was approved by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who personally “certified this case is of public interest” and argued the government has the right to “enforce the Fair Housing Act,” according to the filing.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that government actions classifying citizens by race are presumptively unconstitutional,” according to U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros for the Northern District of Illinois, whose office is joining the case.

“The Constitution demands that the government treat citizens as individuals, not as members of a racial class,” he added. “Distributing public funds based on an individual's ancestry or race divides the citizenry and establishes the very hierarchy the Equal Protection Clause was designed to dismantle.”

In a brief statement, the city of Evanston said it “maintains its position” on the legality of the program.

“While we are cognizant of the filing made by the DOJ, the City does not provide comments regarding active litigation,” the city said.

“The movement for reparations is, at its core, a movement for justice, accountability and the necessary repair of historical and ongoing harms that shape our nation’s landscape,” according to a statement from Evanston’s reparations program partner FirstRepair.

“While this latest legal maneuver is an unfortunate escalation, it is not unexpected,” the group said. “We recognize this is not merely a challenge to one city, but as a direct attempt to obstruct the broader, growing movement for reparative justice.”

After taking office, Dhillon redirected the storied Civil Rights Division to focus on the president’s agenda.

Dhillon, a former personal attorney for Trump, filed a barrage of attention-grabbing lawsuits on behalf of right-wing activists against gender-affirming healthcare and school policies and state and local laws designed to protect LGBT+ people across the country before she was nominated to lead the so-called “crown jewel” of the Justice Department.

At the Justice Department, Dhillon has pushed for investigations into transgender athletes, allegations of “anti-Christian bias,” and institutions with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.