Justice Department sues to block Louisiana’s voucher program

On the same day he gave a speech celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s life on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Justice Department to file a motion to prevent 34 predominantly black school districts in Louisiana from allowing families to utilize the state’s voucher program. And the Justice Department’s reasoning...

On the same day he gave a speech celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s life on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Justice Department to file a motion to prevent 34 predominantly black school districts in Louisiana from allowing families to utilize the state’s voucher program.

And the Justice Department’s reasoning sounds like it is straight out of a dystopian novel.

It claims that 22 districts across the state are violating 50-year-old desegregation orders by allowing their students to use vouchers. These desegregation orders require schools to have roughly the same racial makeup as the districts they are in.

The motion references only two examples of schools that the Justice Department believes has violated these orders. One of them – Cecilia Primary School (30.1 percent black in a district that is 46.5 black) – lost six black students because of vouchers.

In the eyes of the Justice Department, these six students leaving increased “the difference between the school’s black percentage from the district’s and reinforced the school’s racial identity as a white school in a predominantly black school district.”

The Justice Department doesn’t care that nearly 90 percent of the students using the voucher are black and that these students are leaving 157 schools that the state has deemed academically unacceptable because of their poor performance.

That doesn’t matter to the Justice Department – it’s all about making sure the numbers are right.

In what is another slap in the face to Louisiana families, the Justice Department claims that its injunction should not only apply to those districts under desegregation orders, but also all districts where students could use vouchers.

The Attorney General needs to remember that the people utilizing the voucher program aren’t inanimate objects – they are children who deserve a quality education.

The teachers unions in Louisiana should remember that too. Initial reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that these unions personally requested this lawsuit.

In the end, Louisiana teachers unions have proved they are so desperate to cling to power that they are willing to keep students in failing schools.

The Justice Department should immediately retract their motion and apologize to the Louisiana families whose children are benefiting from the voucher program.

Otherwise, the Justice Department should just admit that it is a union henchman and quit acting like it has the best interests of children at heart.