Can State Nondiscrimination Protections Mitigate Bullying and Attempted Suicide Among LGB Students?

• In Event: Grassroots Governance, Collaboration, Practitioner Discretion

Abstract

State policies that prohibit discrimination in schools based on students’ sexual orientation and gender identity act as a reparative solution to reducing LGBTQ+ students’ exposure to harm in schools (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2014; Hatzenbuehler & Pachankis, 2016). A growing body of literature demonstrates an association between protective state legislation (e.g., nondiscrimination, marriage equality, and school antibullying) and reduced mental health risks and symptoms among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender-expansive (LGBTQ+) students (Fields & Wotipka, 2022; Meyer et al., 2019; Pearson et al., 2021; Raifman et al., 2017; Seelman & Walker, 2018; Watson et al., 2021). In this study, I ask: What is the impact of state nondiscrimination policies that enumerate sexual orientation protections on rates of LGB students being bullied at school and attempting suicide across 22 U.S. states?

Data comes from three sources: (1) state nondiscrimination laws, regulations, and court interpretations from all 50 U.S. states from 1985 to 2021, (2) state-level characteristics from 2015 to 2021 American Community Survey (ACS), and (3) student reports of being bullied and attempting suicide from the biennial 2015 to 2021 state-level Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). State-level YRBS uses a two-stage, cluster sample design to construct a representative sample of 9th-12th grade students in the state (Underwood et al., 2020). The analytic sample includes 41,924 LGB high school students in 22 U.S. states biennially from 2015 to 2021. To identify the effect of state nondiscrimination policies that enumerate sexual orientation protections on rates of LGB students being bullied at school and attempting suicide, I used Callaway & Sant’Anna’s (2021) difference-in-differences approach for staggered policy implementation. I treated adoption as a natural experiment and compared LGB student bullying and attempted suicide rates (1) before and after a state adopted protections and (2) between states that adopted protections from 1985-2012, “treated,” to states that adopted protections in 2018-2021, “not-yet-treated.”

Among not-yet-treated states, LGB students experienced a 17.1% reduction in being bullied at school. Despite a significant reduction in bullying, I did not find a significant reduction in attempted suicide among LGB students. Given the few post-treatment periods in this analysis and the large scholarly base that links bullying to suicidality (NASEM, 2020), I interpret this null result with caution. The adoption of sexual orientation protections in nondiscrimination state policies may take longer than the two post-treatment periods included in this analysis to reduce suicidality among LGB students.

All students deserve the right to a safe school environment. Ongoing federal and state-level political attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights (ACLU, 2025; McQuillan et al., 2024) threaten LGBTQ+ students’ ability to thrive in schools (GLSEN, 2018; Hatzenbuehler et al., 2024; The Trevor Project, 2024). Results from this study suggest that state-level sexual orientation nondiscrimination policy protections reduce bullying among LGB students. State-level LGBTQ+-protective policies reduce the harm LGBTQ+ students face in schools and offer a preventative policy solution to decreasing bullying in schools among LGB students (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2024; NASEM, 2020; Russell et al., 2021).

Author

• Erin K Gill, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author