A program set up by an Illinois city that hands out huge sums of cash, but only if the recipients are black, is facing a showdown now in court.
That’s after U.S. District Judge John F. Kress refused to dismiss the case brought by Judicial Watch, as officials in the city of Evanston had demanded.
The program appears to be a blatant violation of a long list of rulings that say government programs can’t be based on race.
“Evanston’s reparations program provides $25,000 cash payments to blacks only,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Constitution forbids race-based government programs like this. We welcome the court’s decision to allow this historic lawsuit to move forward against this woke, racist program.”
Judicial Watch explained it filed a civil rights lawsuit to challenge the town’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a “Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program.”
It is set up to make $25,000 cash payments to “black residents and descendants of black residents” who lived in Evanston during a certain time period.
That requirement violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Judicial Watch charged.
So far, the city has handed out about $3.5 million to 137 people.
Kress most recently declined to accept the city’s demand the case be dismissed, “finding that the plaintiffs have sufficient standing to pursue their constitutional claims and that requiring the plaintiffs, who are white, to first file for a program they were ineligible for due to their race was a futile gesture,” Judicial Watch said.
The government watchdog organization said, “The 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 discrimination from as many as 105 years ago or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest.”
Judicial Watch said it’s not the only such case going on: Last year officials in San Francisco agreed to settle a lawsuit from Judicial Watch over a gauranteed-income program that preferred black and Latino men who identify as woman.
A few years earlier, the California Court of Appeal affirmed injunctions against race and sex quotas for corporate boards, and Judicial Watch has asked for investigators of Minneapolis Public Schools to review salary agendas.
