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Erin Gill, Graduate Student, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, UW-Madison

Title: Can state nondiscrimination protections mitigate bullying and attempted suicide among LGB students?
 

Abstract: Statepolicies that prohibit discrimination in schools based on students’ sexualorientation act as a reparative solution to reducing lesbian, gay, and bisexual(LGB) students’ exposure to harm in schools. In this study, I test the impactof sexual orientation protections in state nondiscrimination policies on LGBstudents’ rates of being bullied and attempting suicide. Data for this studycomes from three sources: (1) nondiscrimination protections from 1985-2021state policy documents, (2) student reports of being bullied and attemptingsuicide from the 2015-2021 state-level Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and (3)state-level characteristics from the 2015-2021 American Community Survey across22 U.S. states. Preliminary results from a difference-in-differences analysissuggest that sexual orientation protections in nondiscrimination state policiesreduce bullying, but not attempted suicide rates, among LGB students. Statepolicymakers will be interested in the findings of this study as they continueto face competing political pressures to expand or restrict LGBTQ+ students’rights in schools.