Judicial Watch: Federal Court Hearing Set in Civil Rights Class Action Lawsuit Against Reparations Program

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a hearing is scheduled for Friday, September, 26, 2025, in the class action civil rights lawsuit filed against Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of six individuals over the city’s reparations program (Flinn et al. v Evanston (No. 1:24-cv-04269)).

The court ordered the in-person hearing for oral argument on Evanston’s pending motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit over the city’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program, which makes $25,000 direct cash payments to black residents and descendants of black residents who lived in Evanston between the years 1919 and 1969.

Judicial Watch alleges that the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In its response to the city’s motion to dismiss, Judicial Watch states:

[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 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. 

“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,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch is being assisted in the lawsuit by Christine Svenson of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman, LLC.

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