Abstract

Excerpted From: Cameron Beach, The Case for City Reparations, 110 Virginia Law Review 1707 (November, 2024) (150 Footnotes) (Full Document)

American reparations are nearly as old as the country itself. From pre-Civil War abolitionist attempts to General Sherman's Field Order No. 15, many Americans have long sought to advance racial justice through reparatory programs. And while these early attempts foundered on the shoals of virulent bigotry and political impossibility, today's renewed calls for reparations are no longer falling on deaf ears.

In the wake of George Floyd's murder, public support for reparations grew tremendously, particularly among white Americans. As then-California Assemblywoman Shirley Weber put it at the time, “Folks [are] now begin [ning] to realize just how extensively, how deeply, issues of race are embedded in our society and how that can produce what we saw happen to George Floyd in Minneapolis.” When Americans began to call for reparations, policymakers in city, state, and federal government all made commitments to consider reparatory justice. But while leaders in state and national governments later hedged on those commitments, city officials capitalized on the movement's momentum and became the first governments in the country to seriously attempt reparations. Today, a handful of American cities are already administering reparatory programs; many others have established task forces to lay the groundwork for their own programs.

In this Note, I argue that cities both can and should adopt reparatory policies. City government--not state or federal--is the best venue for achieving both effective and constitutional reparations. In Part I, I review the various definitions of reparations, survey the landscape of current city reparations programs, and consider evidence of those programs' success. In Part II, I argue that cities are the best venues for reparations for three principal reasons. First, these reasons are normative, because city government is proximate, responsive, and capable of unique policy innovation. Next, they are pragmatic, because cities enjoy supportive political coalitions that become improbable at the state and federal levels. And finally, these reasons are constitutional, because race-based programs like reparations must connect to a historic harm “with particularity” to pass legal muster, which cities are uniquely well-suited to do. In Part III, I suggest several practical considerations for cities seeking to craft their own reparations policies-- principal among them, financing their program and avoiding interference by the state in which they sit.

It is prudent to acknowledge that this Note is grounded in one fundamental principle: reparations are morally appropriate. I do not waive this debate lightly. My argument, however, is responsive to the question of wherereparations should occur, not why they should--though I hope that place-based arguments will speak indirectly to the normative value of reparations themselves. In short, my argument is rooted in a belief that the moral propriety of reparations cannot, and indeed must not, be divorced from how they are achieved and where they occur--but because there has been much written on the former, I turn my attention instead to the latter.

[. . .]

Despite the obstacles states may place in their path, cities remain the most promising venue for piloting reparations programs. Given their political appetites and proximity to formerly discriminatory policies, cities are well-suited to craft effective and constitutional reparations.

While the work of redistributive justice is nowhere close to done, cities can and should lead the way in this time of national racial reckoning. If we are to see “a revolution of the American consciousness,” then we must start somewhere. If not our cities, then where?

J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, expected 2025.