Some American cities are finally trying to fix what they broke. Evanston, Ill., has a program that provides cash to Black residents as recompense for housing discrimination. The Trump Justice Department wants to shut it down.
Since March 2021, the Chicago suburb has pledged up to $25,000 to Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, or to their children and descendants. The program is funded by donations, a real-estate transfer tax, and taxes on marijuana sales. It has disbursed more than $5 million to people locked out of homeownership by the discrimination the program targets.
In 2024, six Evanston residents sued in federal court (Flinn et al. v. City of Evanston), claiming the program violates the Fourteenth Amendment. The Justice Department intervened, claiming the program violates the Fair Housing Act. Justice says recipients do not have to prove they or their ancestors experienced housing discrimination. But the program targets a specific period — the same period the eligibility window covers — and a specific type of harm. The window is the evidence.
When the lawsuit was filed, Evanston had approved payments to 141 recipients. The complaint says recipients were not required to present evidence of discrimination. That is because the program already identifies the discrimination: a specific time period and a specific type of harm.
In its 2023 Students for Fair Admissions ruling, the Supreme Court narrowed the use of race in college admissions. But it preserved the exception for “remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.” The Court requires the government to “identify the specific instance of past discrimination that it aims to remediate and … determine the precise scope of the injury it seeks to remedy.” That is what Evanston did.
Some of the Trump Administration’s most destructive work has been dismantling tools of racial equity in the federal government and in higher education. Progressive cities will be watching to see whether the law will let a city own a wrong, or only let it perpetuate the wrong. San Francisco, Detroit, and other cities have considered reparations of their own.
Housing discrimination built the wealth gap. A modest check to a descendant is the smallest imaginable repair. Calling that repair “new discrimination” is how the country protects the wealth that segregation built.
