Disclaimer: Not a Senator, please feel free to tell me to go away.This was a bad law when California passed it in some alternate reality and it's a bad law here, too. As a judge I'm profoundly uneasy with the idea of enshrining as clumsy a principle as "affirmative consent" in law, which I'm convinced would have no measurable positive effect and indeed seems likely to lead to a significant increase in false allegations. Before I get shouted down as some kind of rabid MRA, let me elaborate a little.
It's not apparent to me what this means and how it could be successfully implemented. In its current state it's unclear enough that I fear it would inevitably lead to wrongful convictions on charges of rape in ambiguous circumstances. I would assume Senators do not mean that people would now be expected to robotically ask "May I--" at every step of the way, yet the doubtlessly well-intentioned "...nor do silence mean consent" clause seems to imply just that. What exactly is meant by "ensuring" affirmative consent?
I'm also - and especially - deeply queasy about instituting a preponderance of evidence standard for such cases. False rape allegations are not as common as most of the internet might have you believe, but the number is
not negligible either - I would hope that the Senate is wise enough to realise that expelling someone from university, and then possibly sending them to prison and ruining their life because 50.00[...]01% of the evidence arguably points to (ambiguously!) criminal behaviour is a very dangerous line for a society of laws to cross. Unilaterally forcing universities to institute this kind of ill-starred campus activism would be a step in the wrong direction.
