Senator Kamala Harris is aiming to reset her presidential campaign after a strong start and subsequent slump by highlighting her career as a glass-ceiling-shattering prosecutor and making the case against President Trump.

Changes in California’s truancy laws

What Ms. Harris Said

“What ended up happening is, by changing the education code, it also changed — it, by reference then, was in the penal code. And then that was an unintended consequence. And if I could do it over again, I would have made sure that it would not have increased penalties or the ability to prosecute anywhere in the state to prosecute parents, because that was never the intention. And it was never anything that I did.”

— CNN interview in May

This is misleading.

As San Francisco district attorney, Ms. Harris started an initiative in 2006 to reduce truancy in schools that began with educating parents and students, then holding meetings to address issues that led to truancy and, as a final resort, prosecuting parents.

California law, at the time, distinguished between students with three unexcused absences (“truants”) and those with five (“habitual truants”), with repercussions that included warnings, community service or suspension of driver's licenses. If parents “cause or encourage” students to miss six or more days of school, they could be fined up to $2,500 or jailed up to a year. A state review concluded that district attorneys found that penalty difficult to pursue because of a high burden of proof.

In 2010, Ms. Harris helped draft legislation that built upon the San Francisco program.

A spokesman for the senator said she had always pledged to prosecute parents as a last resort during her time as district attorney, and her efforts were “not about punishment, but support of parents.” The spokesman also cited a HuffPost article that said that, as California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris had limited influence over whether local prosecutors carried out the spirit of the law she sponsored.