A conservative group has filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of Evanston arguing that the north suburb’s reparations program meant to repay historical wrongs against Black residents violates the U.S. Constitution.
The nonprofit organization Judicial Watch filed the federal lawsuit last week on behalf of six residents who are not Black but whose relatives lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 — the 50-year period of housing discrimination that caused segregation of Black residents in the city.
The residents say in the lawsuit that Evanston’s first-in-the-nation reparations plan violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because the program uses race as a requirement for eligibility.
Approved by the Evanston City Council in 2021, the program provides up to $25,000 to Black residents with ties to the community between 1919 and 1969. Payments were initially designated only for housing costs, but the city expanded the program last year to include an option for direct cash payments.
The “program is nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “This scheme unconstitutionally discriminates against anyone who does not identify as Black or African American. This class action, civil rights lawsuit will be a historic defense of our color-blind Constitution.”
An Evanston spokesperson said the city does not comment on pending litigation.
A “Welcome to Evanston” sign on Ridge Avenue at Howard Street in 2021.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file
Class members of the lawsuit are seeking $25,000 payments and an order halting the city “from continuing to use race as a requirement for receiving payment under the program.”
The plaintiffs claim they also would be in line to receive up to $25,000 in reparations if not for the program’s “race-based eligibility requirement.”
The city of Evanston’s “use of race as a proxy for experiencing discrimination between 1919 and 1969 does not limit eligibility to persons who actually experienced discrimination during that time period and therefore is overinclusive,” the lawsuit states.
To fund the reparations program, Evanston pulled $10 million from a cannabis sales tax in 2019, followed by a 10-year schedule of annual allocations of $1 million.
As of last August, the suburb said it had disbursed about $1 million in payments.
People eligible for the program are categorized into three groups: “ancestors,” who are Black residents who were at least 18 years old between 1919 and 1969; “direct descendants,” who are Black adults with parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who lived in Evanston between that time period; and current Black adult residents who can show they experienced housing discrimination after 1969.
As of this month, 129 ancestor applicants have received payments. The city has approved 454 direct descendant applications, with 80 of them expected to receive payments this year, according to Evanston’s Reparations Committee.
This is the second time Judicial Watch sued the city of Evanston over the reparations program. Another lawsuit regarding public records was filed in Cook County court shortly after the program started in 2021, but it was dismissed a few months later.
