‘Clearly unconstitutional’: Reparations promoters set to defend discriminatory plans in court

One of the big fights triggered by leftists across America has been over reparations.

That mostly involves cash payments to black Americans, whose ancestors may have been abused as slaves in centuries past.

Multiple local jurisdictions have tried delivering those payments at times, not without resistance because of the racially discriminatory nature of the programs.

And the latest fight is developing in Evanston, Illinois.

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has announced a hearing is scheduled Wednesday in a class action civil rights case against the city “on behalf of six individuals over the city’s reparations program.”

The organization explained it “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.”

The case charges that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The city wants the case dismissed.

But Judicial Watch noted, “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. Among the program’s other fatal flaws is that it uses race as a proxy for discrimination without requiring proof of discrimination.”

Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton said, “It should go without saying that Evanston’s reparations program is clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional. Judicial Watch’s class action lawsuit should proceed.”

A report from Newsweek only last year said the U.S. never implemented a widespread slavery reparations program, but it was local elected officials who were pursuing the social engineering agenda.

California even has a state Reparations Task Force that at one time considered a plan to give black Americans and slave descendants priority in professional license applications, a scheme that failed to gain traction.

There have been a variety of other proposals made, too.

Chicago’s mayor at the time also created the city’s own reparations task force in order to address the “historical wrongs committed against black Chicagoans and their ancestors.”

Critics have noted multiple times the legal and constitutional challenges to handing out special benefits based on race.

They cite the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Not only are the benefits subject to challenge for this, critics of such programs note that those who would be forced to pay the “reparations” had nothing to do with the offense against a group of people.