‘Tis the season for expressions of gratitude. So I’m glad to say this week that the U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its hollow and shameful attack against a Louisiana school choice program and the parents who benefit from it. So if you see little Eddie smiling and muttering a few extra Thank-You’s than normal, now you know why.

Back in August Eric Holder’s Justice Department launched a legal assault against the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), claiming that it was undermining desegregation orders. Last week Commentary magazine writer Seth Mandel explained how the Feds’ phony case had completely broken down under the weight of new evidence.

One study shows that the program is “unlikely to have harmed desegregation efforts,” and even further “appears to have brought greater integration to Louisiana’s public schools.” A separate Boston University study concluded that the LSP “has no negative effect on school desegregation in the 34 school districts under a desegregation court order.”

I find it disconcerting not only that such an attack was launched in the first place but also that it was done without any evidence to back it up. As Brittany Corona explains in a National Review column, the actions are part of a disturbing, aggressive anti-choice strategy from the Obama administration. One would hope that this latest embarrassment would cause them to back down on all fronts.

But as the American Federation for Children points out, the decision out of Louisiana is not a complete victory:

In a memo filed over the weekend, the DOJ shifted its focus from opposition to the operation of the program and instead requested the court to create new burdensome reporting requirements that would force the state to provide the federal government with the “name, student ID number, address, race” and other information on each child who applies for the voucher program.

So if the frontal attack on parental choice doesn’t succeed, take the back-door approach of regulatory harassment instead. Guess I’m not as young and idealistic as when I was 5 before. But I’m still thankful for some truly good news and hopeful for even more in the near future.