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The Trump administration is trying to stop Evanston, Illinois' reparations program for Black residents, but city leaders say they plan to continue paying people who qualified for the program as the legal fight plays out.
The Justice Department is challenging the program in federal court, arguing that its race-based eligibility violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act, NPR reported.
In June, the Justice Department moved to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal organization that sued the city in 2024 on behalf of six non-Black residents with family ties to Evanston.
The plaintiffs argue that the reparations program unlawfully excludes them based on race because they don’t have Black ancestry, even though their ancestors lived in the city during the same period covered by the program. The Justice Department is now seeking to join their case and make its own legal arguments against the program.
The program has provided $25,000 grants to more than 300 people since the city began distributing reparations payments in 2021. Allie Zemtseff, who received one of the grants and used it to renovate her kitchen, said the racial eligibility makes sense given the discrimination Black residents faced.
“Of course it's only for Black people,” Zemtseff told NPR. “Because we were the ones affected by the discrimination.”
The program was created to address decades of housing discrimination. A 1921 zoning law steered Black residents toward the city’s 5th Ward, while local banks refused mortgages to Black residents, limiting their ability to purchase homes and build wealth, NPR reported.
Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief, defended the federal challenge, calling the program “race discrimination, pure and simple.”
Robin Rue Simmons, the former city councilmember who spearheaded the reparations effort, said the program was designed to directly address those harms.
“And so I knew that we had to have targeted redress,” Rue Simmons told NPR. “As targeted as the harmful zoning that reinforced redlining.”
Mayor Daniel Biss also defended the program, saying, “This is a program that is trying to undo the consequences of racial discrimination.”
The lawsuit could have implications for other communities considering reparations programs. City leaders in Evanston say they intend to continue paying eligible residents while the case moves through federal court.
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