Trump Officials Challenge Reparations Program in Chicago Suburb

The Justice Department on Tuesday joined a lawsuit challenging a city program offering reparations for civil rights violations to Black residents in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, arguing that the aid program amounted to racial discrimination.

The Justice Department filed a motion to join a lawsuit, filed by the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, representing descendants of people who had lived in Evanston but could not apply for the program because they were not Black. The suit argues that the racial requirement is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — a statute aimed at making formerly enslaved Black people equal citizens of the United States.