Evanston, Illinois has run the first municipal reparations program in US history since 2021. It pays $25,000 to Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969, and to their direct descendants. The city funds it with marijuana tax revenue — deliberately, since marijuana criminalization fell hardest on Black residents. In May 2024, Judicial Watch sued the city on behalf of six non-Black descendants of Evanston residents from the same era. They argue the race-based eligibility requirement unconstitutionally excludes them. On June 16, the Trump Justice Department moved to intervene in that lawsuit, calling the program an unconstitutional racial classification.

1. This Is Race Discrimination (DOJ Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, Andrew Boutros)

The government cannot hand out public money by race — even to address documented past discrimination.

The Constitution bars race-based benefits without proof of individual harm. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called the program "race discrimination, pure and simple. And it is illegal." The DOJ says it violates both the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

The program doesn't require recipients to prove individual harm. The $25,000 goes to Black people who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, and to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Recipients don't have to prove individual harm. US Attorney Andrew Boutros said handing out public money by race establishes exactly the racial hierarchy the Equal Protection Clause exists to prevent. The city refused to cooperate with the DOJ's civil rights investigation when it opened in March.

2. Fifty Years of City Policy Left a Paper Trail (Mayor Daniel Biss, Robin Rue Simmons)

The city documented its own discrimination. It's now paying for what those policies caused.

Fifty years of discriminatory housing policy left a documented record. Starting in 1919, Evanston used zoning to push Black residents into the 5th Ward. Federal agencies then blocked loans in Black neighborhoods and enforced racially restrictive covenants. The city built a specific, documented record of harm it caused. Reparations advocates say that's what makes this program constitutionally different from a general racial preference.

The program is constitutional. Mayor Daniel Biss said Evanston will defend it in court. Robin Rue Simmons, the former council member who built the program, called the DOJ's intervention a "fear tactic." She said it was meant to scare off other cities thinking about similar programs. The nonprofit that administers the payments, FirstRepair, says the program compensates for the specific, documented harms of unlawful zoning and housing policies that Evanston itself enacted.

3. The Law Here Is Unsettled (Taonga Leslie, American Constitution Society)

Government remediation for documented harm has survived courts before — but the legal landscape just shifted.

Governments have paid for documented harm before. Taonga Leslie, Director of Policy and Program for Racial Justice at the American Constitution Society, says targeted remediation like Evanston's "has been well accepted and considered in federal courts." She points to Japanese American internment reparations and other post-discrimination programs as precedent. Evanston's defenders argue that a government paying for its own documented discrimination isn't using race as a general preference — it's paying targeted compensation for specific harm.

The 2023 affirmative action ruling hit college admissions, not government remediation. The Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions that year on Equal Protection grounds. No court has resolved whether that ruling extends to programs like Evanston's — and this case could be the first to answer it.

Where This Lands

The DOJ and the Flinn plaintiffs say the government can't hand out benefits by race without individually demonstrated, specific harm. Evanston and reparations advocates say the city has 50 years of its own documented discriminatory policy as the specific harm, and paying for it is no different from other accepted government remediation programs. Legal scholars defend that distinction in principle. Whether Evanston designed this program tightly enough to survive strict scrutiny, though, is genuinely unresolved. US District Judge John Kness declined to dismiss the case in March, and a ruling on the merits is coming. The Seventh Circuit — and possibly the Supreme Court — will eventually have to rule on whether government remediation for documented discrimination is legally the same as a general race-based preference.

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