DOJ intervened to halt Evanston's reparations program, calling the nation's first such program unconstitutional

On June 16, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division filed a motion to intervene in a pending federal lawsuit challenging Evanston, Illinois's Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program — the first municipal reparations program in the United States. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced the intervention, arguing the program "distributes millions of dollars in cash and housing benefits to people because of the color of their skin" and constitutes "race discrimination, pure and simple." The DOJ contended the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

The Evanston program was established in 2021 following a 2019 city council resolution acknowledging the city's documented role in racially discriminatory housing policies from 1919 to 1969. It uses cannabis tax revenue to provide $25,000 housing grants to eligible Black residents or their direct descendants, with more than $20 million allocated over ten years. The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2024 by non-Black descendants of Evanston residents from the same period, who argued their exclusion from the program was itself a constitutional violation; a federal court denied the city's motion to dismiss in March 2026. The DOJ's intervention aligned its enforcement posture with the original plaintiffs — treating a race-conscious civil rights remedy as a civil rights violation — mirroring the legal strategy advanced by the American Civil Rights Project and consistent with the Civil Rights Division's reorientation under Dhillon away from defending race-conscious programs toward challenging them.