Justice Denied

Boy, I don’t know. Fourteen days for Felicity Huffman. I just don’t know.

Let’s be clear about what happened here: Huffman didn’t just cheat the system to get her daughter into a university for which she was not qualified. In so doing, Huffman took that university spot from another student—perhaps one who studied hard and earned his/her grades. Perhaps the student who didn’t get into U.S.C. because of Huffman’s fraud overcame adverse economic or family circumstances to put him- or herself in a position to succeed. That student’s opportunity now is gone forever. (S)he doesn’t now get to go to U.S.C. just because Huffman got caught.

A parent who is rich enough to pay tens of thousands of dollars to cheat the system is wealthy enough to provide her child with every educational advantage. Huffman had the resources to send her daughter to the best schools, provide private tutoring if needed, and ensure that her daughter didn’t have to work while in school. I can only marvel at the arrogance and sense of entitlement it must take to believe that none of this is enough; that is, that one is so deserving of elite status that lawbreaking is justified if the privileges of wealth are not sufficient to deliver it.

In a time of growing inequality, this sentence only reinforces the widely-held belief that we have a two-tiered system of justice: one for the rich, and another for the rest of us. That belief is deeply corrosive to our faith in government and society. It doesn’t matter that Huffman isn’t an habitual criminal or a congenitally bad actor. What she did strikes at the heart of our conception of America as a meritocracy. For that, she deserved at least several months of quiet time in very close quarters to reflect on her misdeeds.