The Justice Department moved Tuesday to join an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging an Evanston, Illinois, reparations program, arguing that the nation’s first municipal reparations initiative violates the Constitution by distributing benefits based on race and ancestry.
In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the DOJ asked to intervene in Flinn v. City of Evanston, a lawsuit originally brought by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch in May 2024. The complaint challenges Evanston’s reparations program, which provides housing-related benefits to certain black residents and descendants of black residents who were affected by past discriminatory housing policies.
The Trump administration’s DOJ argued that the program’s eligibility criteria violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the federal Fair Housing Act. Federal attorneys also alleged that the city declined to cooperate with a civil rights investigation after receiving a DOJ notice in March.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant Justice Department attorney for civil rights, said the program improperly distributes government benefits based on race and ancestry.
“There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct resources to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods,” Dhillon said in a statement. “Simply handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer. It is race discrimination, pure and simple. And it is illegal.”
According to the filing, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally certified that the case is one of public importance and authorized federal intervention to enforce the Fair Housing Act.
Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said the Supreme Court has consistently held that government classifications based on race are presumptively unconstitutional.
“The Constitution demands that the government treat citizens as individuals, not as members of a racial class,” Boutros said in a statement. “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.”
The filing marks the latest escalation in a legal battle over Evanston’s reparations initiative, which city leaders have defended as a targeted response to decades of discriminatory housing and zoning practices that harmed black residents.
Last month, a federal judge rejected Evanston’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing the case to move forward after nearly two years of litigation.
A spokesperson for the city said officials were aware of the DOJ’s filing and continue to maintain that the reparations program is lawful. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss (D) said the city was reviewing the federal government’s motion and remained confident the program would withstand judicial scrutiny.
“We stand behind our first-in-the-nation reparations program, are confident in its constitutionality, and look forward to defending it in court,” Biss said.
The nonprofit organization FirstRepair, which helps administer the distribution of reparations funds, criticized the DOJ’s intervention as an “unfortunate escalation” but said it was not unexpected.
In a statement, the organization said the lawsuit represents a broader challenge to reparations efforts nationwide and defended Evanston’s program as an attempt to address “the specific, documented impacts of unlawful zoning and housing policies instituted by the City of Evanston.”
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton welcomed the DOJ’s decision to enter the case, calling Evanston’s program a “blatantly unconstitutional reparations scheme” and describing it as a race-based government benefit program.