Really, GAO? Study Finds Need for More Studies

Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on school bullying. Its basic takeaway — indeed, its title — was that the extent of legal protections for vulnerable groups — such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students — needs to be more fully assessed. Sure, federal government, study away. But in the meantime, let’s agree this is a problem, understand that tools are already in place that can help address it, and advocate for increased legal protections.

The GAO report noted a lack of data from federal agency surveys on the prevalence of bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. But it’s not as if the data doesn’t exist. As the report observes, a 2009 study by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) found that nearly 9 out of 10 of the LGBT student respondents had been called names or threatened in the past school year on the basis of their sexual orientation, and two out of three on the basis of their gender expression. And just last week, the Human Rights Campaign released a report on its survey of LGBT-identified youth which found that LGBT youth were twice as likely to have been verbally harassed at school as their non-LGBT peers. I could totally go for a federal study or two, but it seems pretty clear already that this is a serious problem.

And although I can get behind the GAO’s criticism of the lack of data on state law protections for LGBT youth, there are federal protections in place that we know about. As the report acknowledges, there isn’t a federal law that’s directly targeted to address bullying, but in certain circumstances, existing federal civil rights laws provide protections. The U.S. Department of Education enforces laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, and disability, and has recently reminded schools that this includes bullying and harassment on the basis of those characteristics.

For LGBT kids, too, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”) does provide some protection. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination—including peer-on-peer bullying and harassment—in schools that receive federal funding. Harassment based on a student’s failure to conform to stereotypes about how a boy or girl is “supposed” to act is prohibited under Title IX. So LGBT students who are bullied and harassed based on their failure to conform to sex stereotypes are protected by Title IX, even though there isn’t a federal civil rights law that explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (YET! — The Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) would change that and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.)

So, yes, the federal government should study the prevalence of bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and state law protections. But it’s important to acknowledge that existing data on this issue points to an acute problem, that some existing legal protections are in place, and that further legislation is needed.