San Francisco Reparations: Will Mayor Lurie Veto this Unconstitutional and Illegitimate Scheme?

After last week’s near unanimous approval by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors (our 11-member City Council) to establish a “fund” to accept and distribute so-called Reparations to qualified city recipients, will Mayor Daniel Lurie veto it?

In July 2023, San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee unveiled a sweeping reparations plan aimed at “addressing historical injustices against Black residents.” Make no mistake, this scheme goes far beyond a mere 7-figure payout.

The 100-point Reparations proposal includes the highly publicized $5 million lump-sum payments to eligible Black adults, and adds annual income supplements to match the area median income for 250 years. It also features comprehensive Black debt forgiveness, prioritizes housing assistance, and provides targeted programs in Black education and Black health. While proponents and activists frame it as restitution for systemic harms like redlining and the War on Drugs, this plan represents an egregious overreach of government power. It violates core principles of individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, and colorblind justice enshrined in American law. It also pretends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t exist.

Not only does it flout federal and state constitutional protections against racial discrimination, it also imposes an unsustainable financial burden on taxpayers today and in the future, exacerbating social divisions rather than fostering unity. Mayor Daniel Lurie has the duty to outright reject it in favor of merit-based, race-neutral reforms.

At the federal level, the Reparations plan violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates that no state shall “deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.” San Francisco’s planned race-based government actions are subject to strict scrutiny, requiring a compelling governmental interest, where  the plan fails miserably. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard reaffirmed that racial classifications are by nature inherently suspect and rarely justifiable, even for “remedy” purposes.

San Francisco’s plan explicitly discriminates by limiting government benefits to Black residents based on racial identity and historical criteria, such as descent from enslaved persons or residency during “discriminatory eras.” This creates a class of beneficiaries without demonstrating that the city’s actions are the least restrictive means to achieve equity.

Such monetary payments punish current non-Black residents who bear no personal culpability for past “sins,” violating the Constitution’s promise of equal treatment.

Furthermore, the plan’s administration through public organizations could implicate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in any program receiving federal financial assistance. San Francisco, reliant on federal grants for housing and education, risks lawsuits for using taxpayer dollars to fund racially exclusive benefits. Andrew Quinio, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, called the San Francisco’s ordinance a “very explicit racially discriminatory purpose,” and “horrendously unlawful” under federal law. I agree.

State-level violations are equally shocking. California’s Proposition 209 which voters enshrined in the state constitution as Article I, Section 31, explicitly bans the state and counties from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, or contracting. Passed by voters in 1996 as the California Civil Rights Initiative, it was designed to ensure meritocracy over racial quotas. The city’s reparations plan’s race-specific payouts, racial housing priorities, and race-based business grants directly breach this provision by favoring Black applicants over all others, regardless of individual need or merit. We should anticipate swift legal challenges, as even privately funded programs (allowed to make contributions to the new fund) when administered by government entities fall under Prop 209’s purview.

Additionally, the plan transgresses Article I, Section 7 of the California Constitution, which mirrors the federal Equal Protection Clause by guaranteeing due process and equal protection.

By committing public funds and resources to race-based remedies without voter approval or sufficient appropriations, it may also violate California’s Anti-Deficiency Act (Government Code Section 16304), which prohibits city hall expenditures exceeding budgeted funds.

The Reparations plan’s 250-year income guarantee to recipients’ heirs, for instance, pledges future revenues without legislative safeguards, inviting fiscal chaos and certainly legal challenges with injunctions.

San Francisco’s city hall officials continually seek workarounds, valid and invalid, putting the breaking of federal and state law above the needs of the vast majority of city’s residents and businesses. The board of supervisors does not have our best interests at heart, clearly.

Beyond the legal transgressions, the Reparations plan embodies a fiscal recklessness antithetical to values and expectations of limited government and personal responsibility. Estimates put the cost to taxpayers at over $200 billion, equating to nearly $600,000 per non-Black household in a city already grappling with massive budget deficit of $1 Billion for 2026. This would necessitate massive tax hikes and service cuts, driving businesses and residents to flee, risking fiscal collapse. Redistributionism ignores the root causes of inequality, like family breakdown and educational failures, instead of promoting self-reliance through school choice or deregulation. It punishes innocent taxpayers, many immigrants or descendants of non-slave-owning lineages, for historical wrongs which they did not commit, echoing the moral hazard of welfare dependency. Who in their right mind would choose to live in San Francisco going forward?

Adding to these concerns is San Francisco’s famously notorious reputation for fiscal impropriety, fraud, and mismanagement; the city government is utterly untrustworthy to administer any such ambitious program, if it ever got to that point. The ongoing Public Works corruption scandal, stemming from former director Mohammed Nuru’s bribery convictions involving millions in kickbacks from contractors like Recology, has exposed systemic pay-to-play schemes. Recent cases include former employees embezzling hundreds of thousands from workers’ compensation funds, nonprofit contractors misusing millions in grants, and department heads convicted of fraud.

San Francisco voters approved a new Inspector General position in 2024 to combat persistent government waste and abuse, yet schemes continue undeterred amid budget shortfalls. Entrusting scandal-plagued bureaucrats with distributing billions in race-specific reparations benefits invites obviously inevitable corruption, waste, and favoritism, further eroding public trust and flushing taxpayer dollars down the toilet.

Recent developments underscore these flaws. In October 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed statewide reparations bills, citing practical and legal headwinds, while the separate San Francisco reparations fund, launched in December 2025 (without initial city funding), relies on “voluntary donations.” This piecemeal approach evades accountability but cannot mask the plan’s core illegitimacy. Mayor Lurie must act swiftly and decisively, to stop implementation of the Reparations Plan, pivot to jobs programs, better education and enhancing the family structure, now.