The administration’s latest strike against school choice is a lawsuit against a program in Louisiana, created by Republican Governor Bobby Jindal. The Justice Department is using a 1975 desegregation order to argue that Louisiana should get approval from a federal court before giving scholarships to students in some school districts. Otherwise, the department claims, the scholarships could make Louisiana schools less racially integrated. …

The Justice Department cites two public schools to illustrate its concerns. Five white students used scholarships to leave one, “reinforcing the racial identity of the school as a black school.” In another, the exit of six black students made a “white school” whiter.

This is racial bean-counting at its worst. Jason Bedrick, who studies education policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, calculates that the first school went from 29.6 percent to 28.9 percent white. The second went from 30.1 percent to 29.2 percent black. These are trivial changes.