Lucy Washington was pulled over in Chicago in December 2023 for failing to signal. She told the officers she was carrying a gun, and she had a concealed carry license. They arrested her anyway. On Nov. 5, a federal judge said that may not have been an accident.
Judge Virginia Kendall ruled that Washington’s lawsuit against the city can go forward. She wrote that Washington’s allegations “tell a plausible story of a widespread practice where City officers target Black drivers who possess firearms, pull them over, and then initiate unconstitutional seizures and arrests.”
Washington is a real estate agent and a single mother. Her criminal case was dismissed once the courts confirmed her license was active on the night of the stop. She sued in December 2024 for false arrest and illegal search. Her suit relies on Illinois Department of Transportation data showing that Black drivers in Chicago are stopped at four times the rate of white drivers, and it names other drivers arrested in similar circumstances.
CBS News Chicago has been reporting the pattern since last October, finding Black gun owners charged with felonies even though their FOID cards and concealed carry licenses were in order. In Washington’s case, the state database showed her license as expired even though she had just renewed it. Illinois State Police told the station that officers should not take enforcement action when they cannot verify a license in that database. Another driver, Louis McWilliams, a Tinley Park business owner, spent a day in jail after an April 2024 stop for a missing front plate. His charges were dropped three months later, and he lost a major business deal.
The same reporting found that neither the Chicago Police Department nor the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office tracks how many people with valid licenses are wrongly charged. The department has recovered 52,000 firearms since 2019, and it cannot say how many belonged to people who did nothing wrong. A veteran officer, speaking anonymously to CBS, said “I think race is a big factor” and that gun recoveries bring supervisors’ attention and promotions. That is one unnamed source’s account, and the court has not found it true.
The department and the city’s Law Department declined to comment, citing the litigation. Superintendent Larry Snelling has also declined to discuss the cases.
This ruling is not a verdict. It means Washington gets to demand records and testimony, and the city will have to explain its numbers under oath. For a Black driver in Chicago with a license in her wallet, the cost of a stop like this goes far beyond a night in custody: a mugshot that lingers, a felony charge to fight, a gun the city kept even after a court ordered it returned.
A city that cannot say how many licensed owners it has wrongly arrested has not tried to find out. Chicago should start counting, and release what it finds before discovery forces it to.
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