By the Sun-Reporter Staff

 New mayor. New year. Daniel Lurie signed San Francisco’s reparations fund into law and didn’t hold a press conference about it.

No podium. No cameras. No speech.

Just a signature and a $5 million fund for Black residents — the first time a California city actually spent money toward reparations. Not studied it. Not commissioned a report about it. Actually spent money.

That was a Tuesday. By February 5th, the lawsuits had arrived.

The Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit on behalf of several San Francisco residents, including a registered Republican named Richie Greenberg. The argument: the fund violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution because it benefits Black residents specifically. “Acknowledging past injustice,” their attorney said, “does not give the government license to spend public resources on programs that sort people by race.”

Greenberg said the fund was dividing the city.

The city being divided is the same city that redlined Black neighborhoods for decades. The same city where the Black population dropped from 13 percent in 1970 to under 5 percent today — squeezed out by rising rents and displacement while the tech boom made everyone else rich.

That city. Divided by a $5 million fund.

The ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors in December 2025 includes more than a hundred recommendations — homeownership assistance, employment pathways, tuition support, health investment. The lump sum payment of $5 million to eligible Black residents is one piece of a much larger plan.

A supervisor said when it passed: This would be the first time a city in California actually spent money towards achieving reparations for Black people.

He was right. Which is exactly why the lawyers came.

This case will wind through the courts for a while. The Pacific Legal Foundation is good at what they do. San Francisco’s lawyers are not unprepared. Nobody knows how it ends.

What everybody knows is this: the city took 50 years to get here. The lawsuit took 26 days.

Keep watching.

San Francisco’s reparations ordinance was signed into law in January 2026. The Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit February 5, 2026. The case is ongoing.