(This article was first published in the Los Angeles Times on November 12, 2019.)

The wealthy parents ensnared in the college admissions scandal violated the law in numerous ways. They falsified standardized test scores, fabricated athletic profiles and disguised payments for admissions consulting as tax-deductible charitable contributions.

But the prosecutors’ recent addition of bribery charges in some of the cases promotes the erroneous view that family financial contributions have no place in the admissions process. In donating money with the hope that it will increase a child’s likelihood of admission, parents are doing precisely what schools have led them to believe they should do.

(Continue reading the article on the Los Angeles Times’ page here.)

Ralph Richard Banks is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and author of the book “Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone.”