Overview
- The Civil Rights Division filed a motion and a proposed complaint to intervene in Flinn v. City of Evanston, asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to let the federal government join the 2024 class-action challenge.
- The DOJ alleges in its filing that Evanston’s Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program, which offers $25,000 cash payments or housing assistance to Black residents and their descendants tied to 1919–1969 residency, violates the Equal Protection Clause and the Fair Housing Act.
- Evanston approved the program in 2019, funded it largely with a local cannabis sales tax, authorized about $20 million in total and has distributed roughly $5 million to $7 million so far to hundreds of recipients.
- A federal judge rejected the city’s motion to dismiss the private suit in March 2026, the DOJ opened a separate civil-rights investigation that the city declined to cooperate with, and the department’s intervention is now pending before the court.
- The case puts a Trump administration legal position on race-based remedies into direct conflict with a first-in-the-nation municipal reparations effort, and a ruling could stop further payments and affect other local reparations plans nationwide.