To my knowledge, Brown is the first prominent elected Democratic official to raise such questions of fundamental fairness in regard to how the country’s campuses now deal with sexual-misconduct allegations. Additionally, he expressed concern about the lack of transparency about how current rules are affecting the lives of students—particularly people of color. “We have no insight into how many formal investigations result in expulsion, what circumstances lead to expulsion, or whether there is disproportionate impact on race or ethnicity,” he wrote. His concerns, and his action, put Brown, whose term ends next year, at odds with his state party (the bill passed unanimously among Democrats) and the national one.

Last month, in a three-part series for The Atlantic, I argued that the worthy initiative by the Obama administration to address sexual misconduct on campus had in many ways gone awry. I wrote about the systematic deprivation of due process for the accused, the junk science that had infiltrated many adjudications, and concerns that a disproportionate number of men of color have been accused. I find Trump to be troubling and dangerous, so it has been strange to find myself agreeing with much of the reforms his education secretary has proposed so far regarding campus sexual-misconduct policy. Now Brown has written a letter that echoes many of the concerns raised by DeVos about previous policies.

In my series, almost all the critics of the Obama administration’s policies were Democrats and feminists. They have spoken out because of their own increasing worries in recent years that the legitimacy of the fight against sexual assault was being undermined by new rules on campus that had the effect of potentially turning any sexual encounter into a possible violation. Except for Brown’s singular statement, Democratic elected officials have not widely acknowledged—or perhaps do not understand—that their constituents equally desire the safety of their college-age daughters and sons, and that they want their sons to get through college without being labeled as predators because of a normal, if stumbling, teenage sexual encounter. Numerous Democratic members of the House and Senate have vowed to do everything in their power to oppose any Trump administration reform of Title IX. Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, just introduced federal legislation that mirrors the bill Brown vetoed.

In reporting on this topic for the past several years, I’ve been struck at how blithely the federal Department of Education, state legislators, and college administrators have taken the ending of the educations of young men (they are almost all young men) accused of campus sexual misconduct. Being suspended or expelled for a sexual violation on campus can prevent someone from getting an undergraduate degree and may permanently bar him from many professions. Brown acknowledged the gravity of such punishment in his letter: “Depriving any student of higher education opportunities should not be done lightly, or out of fear of losing state or federal funding.”