Katie Porter Earned Thousands Off Textbooks She Required Students to Purchase
AENN, Breitbart
JORDAN DIXON-HAMILTON21 Sep 2022
Democrat Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), a former University of California Irvine (UCI) law professor whose net worth is estimated to be as high as $2 million, earned thousands of dollars in royalty payments after she required her students to purchase textbooks she authored.
In 2017, Porter’s final year as a law professor before entering Congress, she earned $286,674 from her teaching salary.
Despite Porter’s more than a quarter million dollar salary, the California Democrat still earned money on the backs of her students by requiring them to purchase textbooks she wrote.
As Fox News reported:
The seventh edition of “The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems” a book co-authored by Porter and a few other others, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was required material for Porter’s Bankruptcy LAW 523 class in fall 2017, according to a syllabus for the course.
Another one of her works, “Modern Consumer Law,” a book authored by Porter and released in 2016, was required reading material for Porter’s Consumer Law 5225 class in fall 2017, according to a syllabus for the course.
Porter also listed one of her textbooks as required reading material for the bankruptcy law class she taught in 2015 and 2016.
While Porter’s students were spending hundreds of dollars on the required textbooks, publishers paid Porter thousands of dollars in royalty payments.
For example, Porter’s 2018 financial disclosure revealed she earned $7,795 in “publishing royalties.” Porter’s 2017 financial disclosure showed between $2,501-$5,000 in royalties from her law textbooks. Porter also reported earning between $201-$1,000 in realties from the Stanford University Press for a book she authored, Fox News reported.
Porter has continued to earn massive royalty payments while being in Congress, despite not teaching a class at UC Irvine in over four years.
More recently, Porter’s 2020 financial disclosure revealed that she earned as much as $5,000 in “royalty payments from Wolters Kluwer on two academic law textbooks.”
Porter’s textbooks cost her students hundreds of dollars, with their prices increasing over the years.
As Fox News explained:
The cost of the required textbooks Porter co-authored and used in her courses have varied throughout the years. “The Law of Debtors and Creditors” cost $267 in 2019 but increased to $298 as of 2022, a nearly 12% increase. Porter’s book “Modern Consumer Law” has increased in cost from $216 in 2019 to $275 in 2022, representing an estimated 23% increase.
Porter’s ties with the California law school have come under increased scrutiny after a recent report earlier this month revealed the congresswoman has kept her sweetheart housing deal with UC Irvine due to help from one of the law school’s administrators, who is also a Porter donor.
As Breitbart News detailed:
Although houses in California’s Orange County sell for $1 million or more, Porter purchased her home for $523,000 in 2011, a price far below market value, as part of UCI’s program designed to court academics who otherwise could not “afford to live in the affluent area.”
However, UCI’s deal with Porter required her to continue her service as a full-time faculty member at the law school, otherwise, she would be required to pay her mortgage within months under the agreement’s enforcement provision.
Despite not teaching at the school since entering Congress, Porter donor and UC Irvine law school vice dean Chris Whytock urged administrators to figure out a way for Porter to keep her housing agreement, according to emails obtained by the Associated Press.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
