Trump’s DOJ asks judge to halt first reparations program in U.S. history

The federal government on Tuesday asked a judge to halt the United States’ first reparations program that offered Black people in a small Illinois city $25,000 for 20th century race-based housing discrimination, joining an existing lawsuit that called the program unconstitutional. The program, launched in Evanston, Illinois in 2021, is the first and only one of its kind in the U.S., allotting $20 million to Black residents — their direct descendants — who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 and suffered housing discrimination because of city ordinances, policies or practices. Residents, regardless of race, who experienced discrimination due to the city’s policies or practices after 1969 also qualified. The city has already distributed over $7 million — using revenue from a local tax on legal marijuana sales — to hundreds of people in $25,000 increments to be used for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The U.S. Department of Justice called the program “racially discriminatory” in a court filing Tuesday, saying that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it allotted different benefits on the basis of race. “There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct resources to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods. Simply handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. Approximately 14% of the city’s roughly 76,000 residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census, with 11% identifying as more than one race. A majority of the city’s Black residents live in the city’s Fifth and Second Wards, which are historically low-income areas, according to a 2024 study on the reparations program. Reparations have long been a hot topic Reparations has been a hot-button issue across the country since the abolition of slavery