SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco will need to defend its plans to distribute millions of dollars to black residents and households in the form of so-called slavery “reparations,” after a coalition of opponents challenged the proposal in court as blatant and unconstitutional racial discrimination.
On Feb. 5, the organization known as the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, together with two San Francisco residents, filed suit in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a decision striking down the “reparations” proposal.
“I’ve been keenly paying attention to this issue of Reparations for several years now, watching as city hall officials (and now the mayor), have consistently ignored law and constitutional rights of us taxpayers. They have put rhetoric and ideology ahead of the city’s residents,” said Richie Greenberg, one of the individual named plaintiffs in the action. “I have reached out to the Board of Supervisors, the mayor, the city attorney and the reparations committee itself to demand they cease wasting taxpayers’ money on this unconstitutional plan, and the time has come to bring them to court.”
The lawsuit asserts the city’s “reparations” plan brazenly discriminates on the basis of “race and ancestry,” imposing a system which “replaces individual rights with inherited status and … a system of generational liability enforced by government power.”
CFER and the individual plaintiffs are being represented in the action by attorneys from nonprofit constitutional legal advocacy organization, the Pacific Legal Foundation.
The lawsuit came a little less than two months since San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie signed off on an ordinance enacted by the city’s Board of Supervisors, formally directing the city to move forward with the plan.
The proposal advanced to the Board of Supervisors from the city’s Human Rights Commission in 2023.
In advancing the proposal, the Human Rights Commission asserted the plan is needed to continue the work of not only “remedying” the enslavement of Africans in the U.S., but also “to address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery.”
Under the proposal, the city would steer a raft of benefits, payments and policies to individuals and households that meet certain eligibility criteria, including:
– Being “an African American descendant of a chattel enslaved person or the descendant of a free Black person prior to the end of the 19th century, or has identified as Black/African American on public documents for at least 10 years;”
– Being at least 18 years old; and
– Being “born in and/or migrated to San Francisco before 2006 and has proof of residency in San Francisco for at least 10 years.”
Benefits under the plan would include:
– One-time payments of $5 million to each “eligible person;”
– Ongoing payments for the next 250 years to black households in San Francisco “to reflect the Area Median Income;”
– Forgiveness of all debts for all “eligible persons,” including personal and credit card debts;
– Free home, renters and commercial insurance;
– Exemption from property taxes; and
– Priority consideration for jobs, training programs, professional certifications, partnerships and contracting, among other benefits.
The city has not yet estimated the total cost for such “reparations.”
However, according to an analysis by the Hoover Institution in 2023, the city’s proposal could amount to more than $175 billion, or a cost of $600,000 per non-black household in the city.
The Hoover Institution, however, said that estimate is “conservative,” as they predicted moving forward with the proposal would lead to many businesses opting to leave San Francisco, rather than be stuck paying the bill for the “reparations” plan.
“Implementing a plan of this size — or even one that was one-fifth as large — would lead to significant business and household relocations, which in turn would magnify San Francisco’s existing fiscal problems by reducing the city’s tax base and the scope and depth of its economic activity,” the Hoover Institution wrote in its analysis. “The tax consequences of this proposal would turn San Francisco into a 21st-century version of Detroit.”
However, in late 2025, city leaders decided to move forward with the proposal, setting up a high stakes court fight over the constitutionality of the plan.
In the lawsuit, the challengers specifically assert the plan amounts to violations of non-black San Francisco residents’ rights to equal protection under the law and the right to be free from racial discrimination at the hands of their government.
“San Francisco has now crossed a decisive constitutional line,” the CFER lawsuit says. “This is not a study, a recommendation, or a private charitable effort. It is government action, backed by public resources and enforced by public officials.
“By directing an agency funded almost entirely by taxpayer dollars to administer funding solely dedicated to implement race-exclusive benefits, the City is using public money, public employees, and public authority to carry out an unconstitutional racial spoils system that allocates benefits and opportunities based on race and ancestry.”
In a statement accompanying the filing of the lawsuit, Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Andrew Quinio said the city’s good intentions at remedying past harms doesn’t allow them to bypass the Constitution.
“Acknowledging past injustice does not give the government license to spend public resources on programs that sort people by race and ancestry today,” said Quinio. “The Constitution requires the city to address proven harm directly, not through sweeping racial and ancestral classifications. This lawsuit is about ensuring that all Americans are treated as individuals under the law and not forced to subsidize government policies that collectively bind them to history that they did not experience or inflict.”
