Justice Department Seeks to Join Lawsuit Against Evanston Reparations Program

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division moved on June 17, 2026, to intervene in a lawsuit challenging Evanston, Illinois’s reparations program. The department’s proposed complaint contends that the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated that the city has chosen to distribute millions of dollars in cash and housing benefits to people because of the color of their skin or the color of the skin of their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents.

” Judge Boutros of the Northern District of Illinois stated that distributing public funds based on an individual’s ancestry or race divides the citizenry and establishes the very hierarchy the Equal Protection Clause was designed to dismantle.

Evanston adopted the program in 2019. Under its terms, Black persons who lived in the city as adults between 1919 and 1969, and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, are eligible for $25,000 in cash or housing assistance. The city has paid out more than $5 million to date and plans to distribute millions more as additional funds become available.

The Justice Department contends the city has not identified any specific acts of discrimination the payments are intended to remedy. It also contends the program does not require recipients to show they or their ancestors experienced discrimination while living in Evanston and that eligibility is determined by race alone. A private lawsuit, Flinn et al.

V. City of Evanston, was filed in 2024 by non-Black descendants of 1919–1969 Evanston residents. A federal judge denied Evanston’s motion to dismiss that case in March 2026. The Justice Department opened its own investigation of the program that same month under the Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act, but the city refused to cooperate.