The Justice Department has stepped into a legal battle over a Chicago suburb's pioneering reparations program for Black residents, asserting that the initiative amounts to unconstitutional race-based discrimination. The move marks a significant escalation in the federal government's scrutiny of local efforts to address historical inequities.
Evanston, Illinois, set aside $10 million from cannabis tax revenue in 2019 to create the Restorative Housing Program, a first-of-its-kind local reparations scheme. The program provides grants of up to $25,000 to Black residents and their direct descendants who can demonstrate they suffered housing discrimination due to city policies between 1919 and 1969. Some applicants who experienced harm after 1969, when Evanston banned housing discrimination, may also qualify.
In a court filing, the DOJ argued that the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act. The department contends the initiative is not narrowly tailored to remedy specific, identified instances of past discrimination and that it distributes public funds solely on the basis of race. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement, “There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct aid to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods. Simply handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer. It is race discrimination, pure and simple. And it is illegal.”
The legal challenge originated in 2024 when 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, claiming they were unlawfully excluded from the program's benefits. A federal judge in Illinois denied the city's motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March. The DOJ says it launched an investigation into the program that same month and has accused Evanston of refusing to cooperate with its inquiry.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, a Democrat, defended the program in a statement to local media, saying the city is 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,” Biss said.
The case has drawn national attention as it tests the legal boundaries of local reparations efforts. The DOJ's intervention signals that the Trump administration is prepared to challenge race-conscious policies more broadly, a stance that echoes its opposition to affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Critics of the program argue that while addressing past discrimination is a legitimate goal, using race as the sole criterion for distributing benefits runs afoul of constitutional guarantees of equal treatment under the law.
