EVANSTON, IL — The U.S. Department of Justice is allowed to join a federal lawsuit against Evanston in relation to the city's reparations program, a judge ruled on Thursday.
Northern District of Illinois Judge John F. Kness's ruling means the U.S. is a party to a lawsuit that was filed in 2024 by Judicial Watch, a conservative organization of lawyers. The group argued that Evanston's use of race as an eligibility requirement for its reparations program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because "Remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling governmental interest."
The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division moved to intervene in the lawsuit in June, adding that Evanston's program also violates the Fair Housing Act.
The city's reparations program was established in 2019 and was approved by the Evanston City Council in 2021. It is the first government-funded initiative in the United States that aimed to provide reparations to Black Evanston residents and their direct descendants who faced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969.
The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2024 by descendants of people who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 but were not Black. The case, Flinn, et al. v. City of Evanston, No. 24-cv-4269, challenges their exclusion from the program under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
A federal court denied the city's motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March 2026.
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