The Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm, filed suit against the U.S. Attorney General on Monday “to put an end to a ban on offering compensation to bone marrow donors.” Currently, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 incorrectly treats bone marrow as a nonrenewable solid organ, like a kidney. Apart from the skewed, narrow-view world Congress lives in, bone marrow is renewable, comparable to blood.

Under the act receiving compensation for bone marrow donation is punishable by up to five years in prison. Such a match is rare, especially for minority patients who have only a 25% chance of finding a donor in the current national registry. The law results in around 1,000 Americans losing their lives from lack of a registered marrow match.

When the law is overturned, MoreMarrowDonors.org, a California nonprofit, plans to offer marrow donors a fixed $3,000 scholarship, used for housing allowance or as a gift to a charity of the donor’s choice. It is specifically designed to help more people register in the bone marrow network.

One might question the path we might go down if bone marrow would have a dollar value attached to it but Americans are already paid for donating blood plasma and you don’t have a plasma black market. There is no reason to assume bone marrow, a much more difficult fluid to match to a patient, would result in anything resembling a kidney market. This change in the law would save lives and encourage more people to register as donors.