Jerry Brown’s Title IX Veto

But the California Legislature, in full resistance mode, passed a law explicitly “to protect the Obama-era guidelines,” said Santa Barbara state Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, the bill’s sponsor. Adherence would be “a condition of receiving [state] financial assistance.”

Enter Mr. Brown, who echoed Mrs. DeVos’s concerns in a letter with his veto: “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.” 

Mr. Brown said accused students must be granted “the presumption of innocence until the facts speak otherwise” and warned that “depriving any student of higher education opportunities should not be done lightly, or out of fear of losing state or federal funding.” He added, in an affront to the idols of identity politics, that “we have no insight “ into “whether there is disproportionate impact on race or ethnicity.” All of which is true.

Mr. Brown’s second term ends next year, so perhaps he feels politically liberated to resist the resistance mob when it tramples bedrock due-process protections. But adults in both political parties need to keep their eyes on those principles regardless of what they think of the Trump Administration.