That one of America’s worst laws was passed with good intentions does not diminish the suffering it has caused. Beyond broken hearts and bodies, the Indian Child Welfare Act has, as identity politics invariably do, stained American law by sacrificing individual rights to a group’s interests.

The stain is not indelible. On Monday, the Supreme Court can begin expunging it by deciding to hear a case that highlights the ICWA’s incompatibility with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The case comes from a Minnesota court that deemed the foster parents of Indian twins to be unfit, for an astonishing reason.

Congress passed the ICWA in 1978, eight years after historian Dee Brown’s book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” quickened interest in the nation’s often horrific history regarding Native American tribes. Mistreatment often included compulsory assimilation of Indian children into the nation’s majority society. As an advocate of compulsory assimilation infamously said, “Kill the Indian” in order to “save the man.”

In 1978, Congress tried to make amends by being respectful of tribal identities. It made a mess.

For more than a year, Nathan and Kellie Reyelts........

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