The federal government on Tuesday asked a judge to halt the United States’ first compensation program that awarded blacks in a small Illinois town $25,000 for racially-based housing discrimination in the 20th century, joining an existing lawsuit calling the program unconstitutional.
This program, launched in Evanston, Illinois in 2021, is the first and only one of its kind in the US, allocates 20 million dollars to Black residents – their direct descendants – who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 and faced housing discrimination due to city laws, policies or practices. Citizens, regardless of race, who experienced discrimination due to city policies or practices after 1969 were also eligible.
The city has already distributed more than $7 million — using property tax revenue from the sale of legal marijuana — to hundreds of people with $25,000 to go toward home repairs, down payments, and interest or late fees on city properties.
The U.S. Department of Justice called the program “racially discriminatory” in a court filing Tuesday, saying it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it allocates benefits differently based on race.
“There are reasonable ways for a city to address past discrimination or direct resources to the most vulnerable citizens and areas. Simply doling out money based on race, however, is not the answer,” said Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement.
About 14% of the city’s 76,000 residents are black, according to the US Census, and 11% identify as more than one race. Most of the city’s Black residents live in the city’s Fifth and Second Wards, which are historically low-income areas, according to a 2024 study by the compensation program.
Restoration has long been a hot topic
Reparations have been a hot topic across the country since the abolition of slavery in 1865. But it has become increasingly divisive in recent years after momentum grew for similar programs across the country following the death of George Floyd in police custody in 2020. At least five states, including California, New York and Maryland, and more than a dozen cities, Detroit have established a research commission or Philadelphia, including Philadelphia or Detroit. restoration of slavery. But none have traveled all the way to Evanston to actually distribute resources.
Robin Rue Simmons, who pioneered the program in Evanston and now heads the committee that oversees the funds, said the federal government’s charge and support is a “fear tactic” intended to dissuade other governments from pursuing similar programs.
Michael Bekesha, one of the attorneys who initially sued the City of Evanston on behalf of six plaintiffs in May 2024, said in an interview that the applicants did not have to show that they were harmed by the City of Evanston, leaving the race as the only process. All of his clients would have entered the program if they were Black, he said.
Bekesha said Evanston’s program is different from the past, pointing to a program that compensated Japanese people after the U.S. government imprisoned more than 100,000 people in concentration camps during World War II, or Chicagoans who were paid after being harassed by the city’s police department between the 1970s and early 1990s.
“Compensation programs are not new, but they have been legal, they have always been linked to certain accidents, certain injuries suffered by certain people,” said Bekesha. “And here in Evanston, there is no connection between the people receiving the money and any action taken by the city of Evanston at any time.”
Simmons strongly disputed the idea that the program was not suited to certain historical policies. He said city-wide rezoning between 1919 and 1969 harmed Black communities for generations, reflecting a growing trend across the country where banks and property owners were reluctant to sell or rent to Black families in more affluent areas. He said those policies often limit access to high-paying jobs, health and education.
“Evanston has set a new precedent. It has shown that racial reparations are possible,” Simmons said.
Conservatives reject race-based restoration
The Trump administration’s move to halt the program comes amid widespread rejection of racially-based reparations, and is a significant shift from former President Joe Biden’s broad support for a congressional investigation into ways to address the government’s long history of racial discrimination.
It also stems from the attitudes that exist among international governing bodies such as the United Nations, which recently adopted a resolution calling on countries to take action to reverse the trafficking of Africans into slavery around the world. The US was one of three countries to reject the measure, while the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union countries abstained.
