diff --git a/flax/nnx/nn/attention.py b/flax/nnx/nn/attention.py
index 4f0c4f0cd..16e09cfab 100644
--- a/flax/nnx/nn/attention.py
+++ b/flax/nnx/nn/attention.py
@@ -104,6 +104,16 @@ def dot_product_attention_weights(
   Returns:
     Output of shape `[batch..., num_heads, q_length, kv_length]`.
   """
+  if not (0.0 <= dropout_rate < 1.0):
+    raise ValueError(
+      f'dropout_rate must be in the range [0, 1), got {dropout_rate!r}. '
+      'A negative or NaN value silently disables dropout without regularizing.'
+    )
+  if not deterministic and dropout_rate > 0.0 and dropout_rng is None:
+    raise ValueError(
+      'dropout_rng must be provided when dropout_rate > 0.0 and '
+      'deterministic=False. Pass a JAX PRNGKey as dropout_rng.'
+    )
   query, key = promote_dtype((query, key), dtype=dtype)  # type: ignore[bad-unpacking]
   dtype = query.dtype