Nearly six months after a nonprofit group filed a lawsuit against the city of Evanston to try to halt its groundbreaking reparations program that attempts to amend for past housing discrimination against African American residents, the legal case is still ongoing, according to the city of Evanston’s Communications and Engagement Manager, Cynthia Vargas.
On Oct. 2, lawyers representing the city of Evanston filed a second motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the conservative nonprofit group Judicial Watch in May. Evanston first filed to dismiss the lawsuit in July, and Judicial Watch filed to oppose the dismissal in September. It will now be up to a federal judge to keep the case moving forward and schedule a hearing or to dismiss it outright, according to Judicial Watch’s president, Tom Fitton.
Fitton earlier told the Tribune that Evanston’s program is “just a proxy for giving out money to people based on race.”
Evanston’s Reparations Committee announced in September that the city had paid over $5 million to Evanston residents who were impacted by racist zoning laws, such as redlining and restrictive real estate covenants, which restricted Black residents from living in some geographic regions of Evanston from 1919 to 1969. The committee’s chair, Robin Sue Simmons, said then that the lawsuit had not impacted the payment of reparations and that it was “business as usual.”
Evanston’s program is largely considered the first attempt by a U.S. city to pay reparations to its Black residents. Unlike some other concepts, however, it focuses on remedying the effects of past housing discrimination on Black residents’ ability to accumulate wealth through home-buying.
Vargas said the city could not comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, accused the city of violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which says all Americans are given equal protection under the law with its reparations program. Fitton, of Judicial Watch, told Pioneer Press that in the city’s motions to dismiss, the city has not been able to show the lawsuit’s six plaintiffs would have been eligible to receive a $25,000 reparations payment if it wasn’t for their race.
“Evanston’s blatantly racist policy must be stopped,” he said.
Evanston’s latest motion to dismiss states that the suit’s plaintiffs do not live in Evanston, do not own property in Evanston and did not apply for reparations in a timely manner before the program’s 2021 deadline.
“Plaintiffs cannot dispute that the application period closed in November 2021, or that applications have not been accepted since that time, far more than two years ago. As a result, Plaintiff’s Complaint was filed outside of the two-year statute of limitations and any request to amend the Complaint would be futile,” the city’s motion to dismiss stated.
Michael Bekesha, one of the Judicial Watch attorneys who submitted the suit, said that the suit’s defendants did not apply for reparations, and that it would have been futile of them to do so because they are not Black, which would have made them ineligible for the payments.
Bekesha did not answer directly whether the defendants live or own property in Evanston. “It’s irrelevant whether or not they do to be eligible for the program,” he said. “There’s nothing in the eligibility requirements that requires them to live in Evanston or own property in Evanston.”
On the City of Evanston’s frequently asked questions page for reparations, the website states “The program identifies eligible applicants as Black or African American persons having origins in any of the Black racial and ethnic groups of Africa. The person must reside in Evanston at the time of disbursement of funds.”