Illinois Homeowners Can Now Remove Racist Clauses From Their Property Deeds

A new law in Illinois allows homeowners to change their housing deeds to remove racist clauses that were used to bar people of certain races and religious groups from buying homes or living in a particular neighborhood.

The clauses, which are known as racial restrictive covenants, were outlawed under the Fair Housing Act in 1968, but they remain buried in an unknown number of property documents across the United States — relics of a broader effort by the real estate industry, federal housing authorities and individual homeowners to prevent integration.

In many states, it can be arduous, if not impossible, to remove the covenants from property records, prompting states such as Illinois to pass laws that streamline the process. As of Jan. 1, homeowners in the state can submit a request to their county recorder to remove the covenants. The cost per request is capped at $10.

Since 2018, at least 13 states have passed laws to make it easier to remove racial covenants from deeds. A bill to do so in New York is pending in the Legislature.

One of the first people to request the modification in Illinois was Nicole Sullivan, who has been trying to change her deed since around 2011, when she bought a house in Lake County, in the northeastern corner of the state.

Ms. Sullivan’s homeowner’s association had sent her a copy of the deed, dated March 1929, to explain why she could not create a fenced-off area for her dog on the property.

She was intrigued by the document, then alarmed when she found a clause stipulating that the house could never be sold to or occupied by “any person or persons of the African or Negro, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish or Hebrew races, or their descendants.”

Ms. Sullivan, who is white, and a neighbor tried to have the language removed but kept hitting roadblocks. Eventually, they approached State Representative Daniel Didech, a Democrat from Buffalo Grove, who with State Senator Adriane Johnson, also a Democrat from Buffalo Grove, sponsored legislation to allow changes in the Illinois General Assembly. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill into law in July.

Ms. Sullivan, 41, said that the law change was largely a symbolic victory and that there was much more to do to improve housing equity in her community and across the United States, but she hoped the law would help make her neighborhood more diverse.

“We’re stopping this cycle of recycling this language back into our community, so no longer will new community members interested in putting up a fence have to read about how their ancestors would not have been allowed to be there,” Ms. Sullivan said.

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