EDITORIAL: Protecting the rights of the accused in campus sexual assault cases

It’s rare when sensible government action emanates from California, particularly from the governor’s office. But we’ll give credit where credit is due.

California Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month embraced a position advanced by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos when he vetoed a bill that would have trampled due-process rights on college campuses across the Golden State.

As David French reported for National Review, Gov. Brown snuffed out a state bill that would have imposed constitutionally suspect Obama-era Title IX guidance on California public campuses. The bill would have mandated that colleges satisfy the lowest burden of proof in sexual-harassment and sexual-assault adjudications, defined sexual harassment in an overly broad fashion and failed to adequately protect the fundamental rights of the accused.

In his veto message, Gov. Brown wrote: “Thoughtful legal minds have increasingly questioned whether federal and state actions to prevent and redress sexual harassment and assault — well-intentioned as they are — have also unintentionally resulted in some colleges’ failure to uphold due process for accused students. Depriving any student of higher education opportunities should not be done lightly or out of fear of losing state or federal funding.”

That puts Gov. Brown in the same company with Ms. DeVos, a frequent target of progressives because of her advocacy against the bureaucratic public education system in this country and the stretched-to-the-breaking-point interpretation of Title IX on college campuses. As Mr. French noted: “No less a progressive luminary than Gov. Jerry Brown now agrees with (DeVos) about Obama’s overreaching Title IX guidelines for campus sexual-assault cases.”

California lawmakers acted as part of the Trump “resistance” after Ms. DeVos announced she sought to re-examine the wisdom of the Obama administration’s 2011 “dear colleague” letter issued as “guidance” to help colleges deal with sexual assault. She eventually concluded last month that the letter went too far and encouraged schools to undermine due process or risk losing federal funds.

Campus sexual assault is a serious problem. But attacking that issue shouldn’t entail uprooting the bedrock principle of innocent until proven guilty. Due-process advocate K.C. Johnson has regularly noted that colleges across the country are losing one lawsuit after another filed by accused students who were suspended or expelled under “informal complaint” procedures that provide no way for those students to present evidence of innocence. These students were never charged by police.

The Obama missive was criticized by legal experts from across the political spectrum. In September, four professors at Harvard Law School — hardly a bastion of right-wing thought — asked the school to reconsider its policies under the mandate, arguing that there weren’t enough protections for the accused and that the definition of sexual assault had been stretched beyond accepted legal definitions. “These policies have meant that accused students have, on many occasions, been subjected to a process that really does not give them a fair chance to establish what the real facts of the incident were,” Harvard’s Elizabeth D. Bartholet said.

Progressives have piled on Ms. Devos, accusing her of abetting wrongdoing. That’s nonsense. Kudos to Gov. Brown for standing up to the pressure and making the correct decision.