Meet the new Democrats. Same as the old Democrats.

There are no nightsticks, firehoses, or police dogs on the schoolgrounds these days, but the fundamental idea is the same: segregation now, segregation forever.

At least that’s the case in Wellesley, Massachusetts, an affluent suburb of Boston and the home of Wellesley College, the school that taught Hillary Clinton and countless other impressionable young women how to hate their country. At issue is the Wellesley Public School System’s insistence on separating its students by race into what are euphemistically called “affinity groups.”

This overtly racist practice first came to light in the wake of an Atlanta-area massacre in which six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent. As it turned out, the deeply disturbed and sex-addicted Atlanta killer had targeted sex workers, not necessarily Asian women, in order to “eliminate the temptation.” But that inconvenient fact wasn’t good enough for the segregationists in Wellesley, who promoted a “Healing Space” for the district’s Asian and Asian American community at the exclusion of its white students and staff.

The smoking gun was a damning email invitation from a Wellesley teacher that read, “This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, not for students who identify only as White.” The email, which was apparently sent to students by numerous middle-school teachers, added, “If you need to know more about why this is not for White students, please ask me!”

A group called Parents Defending Education rightly objected to this segregation, and they filed suit in federal court Tuesday afternoon. As their complaint states: “Nearly seven decades of Supreme Court precedent have made two things clear: Public schools cannot segregate students by race, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. [The district] is flouting both of these principles.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board also weighed in:

Wellesley has promoted “affinity groups” that hold events for specific races. Parents Defending Education alleges these groups are racially exclusionary “by definition and design,” given that “certain Wellesley students” including the plaintiffs’ children “are prohibited from participating in certain school activities because of their race and ethnicity.” The parents say this violates the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Wellesley parents also take issue with the school district’s handling of so-called bias incidents, which they say penalize and chill speech. Under school policy, a bias incident can encompass “conduct, speech or expression” that “has an impact but may not involve criminal action” or demonstrates even “unconscious bias,” among other acts.

It’s encouraging to see the 14th Amendment, which has long been used by the Left as a bludgeon, being turned back upon these racial arsonists. The parents say the district and multiple administrators have unfairly created the affinity groups for students of color, and they’ve enacted policies that shame people into silence when their beliefs and opinions run afoul of the district’s prevailing Leftthink.

As our Mark Alexander has written, the Left has a long and sordid history with race — and it doesn’t like being reminded of it.