Move over, Chicago. When it comes to cutting reparations checks, it’s Evanston leading the charge — and taxpayers are once again footing the bill.
The affluent suburb north of Chicago has approved more than $1 million in new payments to 44 residents, each slated to receive $25,000 under the city’s controversial reparations initiative. The program, which critics say openly discriminates based on race, is moving forward despite mounting legal challenges.
This latest round of payouts brings the city’s total spending on the effort to more than $6.35 million distributed to 254 individuals so far.
“Over the next few weeks,” Assistant to the City Manager Tasheik Kerr announced, “residents assigned numbers 127 through 171 will be contacted to let them know their payment is on the way.”
The money doesn’t come from thin air. It’s drawn from a real estate transfer tax and a 3% levy on cannabis retailers. As of Jan. 31, the transfer tax alone had pulled in $276,588. Now, city leaders are eyeing yet another revenue stream: taxes on certain THC products, including Delta-8.
City Attorney Alexandra Ruggie admitted the potential windfall from Delta-8 won’t exactly plug the budget hole. “Delta-8 products tend to be rather inexpensive, so the tax on them — it likely won’t be a huge revenue stream, but it is revenue,” she said.
City officials insist they aren’t playing favorites with timing — just balancing the books. “It’s really important for people to understand we pay as we have the money, and it’s not that we’re withholding from paying everyone,” 2nd Ward Councilmember Krissie Harris explained. “It’s just we have to accumulate the funds to make sure we can pay.”
The program traces back to a 2019 voter-approved plan targeting residents — or their descendants — who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 and were deemed victims of housing discrimination. Notably, the payments are not tied directly to slavery but to alleged discriminatory housing practices from decades past.
Meanwhile, other left-leaning cities are dreaming even bigger. In San Francisco, officials have floated proposals that could hand out $5 million per qualifying resident over historical grievances.
But Evanston’s efforts have not gone unchallenged.
Judicial Watch has filed a class action lawsuit arguing the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by making race a requirement for eligibility.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton didn’t mince words: “To date, Evanston has awarded over $6,350,000 to 254 individuals based on their race. The city must be stopped before it spends even more money on this clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional reparations program.”
The organization further argued in court filings, “[T]he program’s use of a race-based eligibility requirement is presumptively unconstitutional, and remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling government interest. Nor has remedying societal discrimination from as many as 105 years ago, or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest. Among the program’s other fatal flaws is that it uses race as a proxy for discrimination without requiring proof of discrimination.”
For now, the checks are still being printed.
While progressive leaders hail Evanston as a model for “racial justice,” critics see something else entirely: a government deciding who gets taxpayer money based on skin color — and daring the courts to stop it.
