Per Seattlepi, California Governor Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that will make California the first State in the nation to define consensual sex as “yes means yes” rule. This bill will adopt specific requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports. States and universities across America are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Numerous victims of sexual assault & women’s advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown’s office, urging him to sign the bill. The new legislation will drastically affect how California & its schools prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Instead of using the refrain “no means no,” the definition of consent under the bill requires “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” Furthermore, under the bill someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep also cannot grant consent. The new bill states that silence or lack of resistance does not constitute sexual consent. The bill also requires training for faculty reviewing complaints and how to properly ask the victim questions about the incident in question. The victims under the new bill will also require access to counseling, health care services and other resources.
When the bill was being discussed, critics said it was too extreme and had the potential to put universities at risk litigation. Numerous Republicans in the Assembly questioned whether statewide legislation is an appropriate venue to define sexual consent between two people. Other detractors of the new legislation have claimed that consent can be nonverbal, with universities using similar logic in their evaluations of previous sexual assault cases. Nonverbal communications like a head nod or moving close to the other individual have been used in the past to justify sexual consent. These type of actions will now no longer be relevant under the new bill in California. Woman advocates of sexual assault support the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the common notion that victims need to display some type of resistance during the said assault to have a valid complaint. The adviser to the National Coalition for Men, asked Governor Brown not to sign the bill; calling the new legislation a “campus rape crusade bill” presumes the guilt of the accused. Nevertheless the bill was signed & passed, meaning that all post-secondary schools (Public or private) in California will treat sexual assault cases much differently than the other 49 states in America.
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