Since Donald Trump was elected to his second term in November, Kat Rohn has been fielding more calls than usual about cyberbullying, misgendering, and physical aggression at schools.
Transgender and other LGBTQ kids have been frequently targeted for bullying, said Rohn, the executive director of OutFront Minnesota. Rohn has also heard from families whose children are experiencing bullying on the basis of their racial or religious identity.
“We are seeing an environment where there is increased harassment happening across the board,” Rohn said.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has signed a slew of executive orders signaling his intention to roll back protections for LGBTQ+ communities, crack down on immigration, and eliminate practices aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion.
But experts say that presidential orders do not change Minnesota law, which provides strong protections against discrimination and harassment. Many of those protections fall under the umbrella of the state’s civil rights law: the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“It’s been here for a long time,” said Rebecca Lucero, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. “It has strong protections. We keep doing our work no matter what.”
“The strongest protections and best tools that we have are rooted here at a state level in Minnesota, and that was unfortunately true even under the last administration,” Rohn said.
Those laws protect Minnesotans from discrimination and harassment on the basis of many protected classes, including race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
“You can’t be kicked off the bus, or told to sit at the back of the bus because you are a certain race,” Lucero said. “You can’t be told girls aren’t good at math, so we’re not going to let you take this advanced math class. You can’t be told, at the public library, we don’t want certain kinds of people here, and what we need is somebody of a certain religion.”
Another Minnesota law, the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, requires schools to take steps to address bullying that occurs for any reason — including any protected characteristic.
In interviews with Sahan Journal, advocates stressed that these laws apply to LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities, who have already been the subject of several Trump executive orders. And these laws apply to kids, too.
“I think it is important to emphasize that no matter what happens under federal law or under our national laws, that the laws in Minnesota will continue to protect transgender kids in particular,” said Christy Hall, senior staff attorney for Gender Justice.
Here’s what Minnesota kids and families need to know.
What protections does Minnesota law provide against bullying?
The Safe and Supportive Schools Act, specifically designed to protect kids against bullying, passed the Legislature in 2014. Advocacy groups like OutFront Minnesota pushed for it as a comprehensive update to the state’s anti-bullying law, which was then just two sentences long. The law required schools to develop processes to address bullying for any reason — including explicit protections for LGBTQ+ students.
Just a few years earlier, a suicide cluster had rocked the Anoka-Hennepin School District, after a number of students were bullied about their sexual orientation. The law also provided protections for students on the basis of many other protected class characteristics — including immigration status.
Carlos Mariani Rosa, who served in the Legislature at the time, recalled the “incredibly tragic” events in Anoka-Hennepin that drove the anti-bullying law, and said the current conservative backlash to rights for transgender and nonbinary people represented “different iterations” of the same fight.
Mariani Rosa is now the executive director of the Minnesota Education Equity Partnership, which recently published a new toolkit for schools and teachers to create safe spaces for immigrant kids. The toolkit includes guidance for how schools can protect kids from harassment and bullying.
“We think Safe and Supportive Schools apply to all students, not just for those instances of bullying and/or targeting GLBTQ students,” he said. “Even though it is meant for that. But it’s also meant for this.”
What is the definition of bullying?
According to the law, bullying consists of “intimidating, threatening, abusive, or harming conduct that is objectively offensive.” For behavior to count as bullying, it must also involve a real or perceived power imbalance between the student who is engaging in the prohibited behavior and the target, or substantially interfere with a student’s educational opportunities.
That includes bullying on the basis of any protected class status, said Macarre Traynham, an assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Education.
“Bullying is bullying,” she said. “As long as it’s student to student, it’s covered under the Safe and Supportive Schools Act.”
What should I do if I am being bullied in school, or my child is?
First, report it to a teacher or administrator at school, Traynham said. Each school district is required to have a clear process for how to address bullying. MDE also has a model anti-bullying policy that schools can adopt.
“Be direct, reference the statute, reference the policies that school districts hold, and get that to administrators who are responsible for taking action at a local level,” Rohn said. “Document experiences to make sure that you have a clear track of outreach to school officials, teachers, administrators, whomever needs to know.”
If a student or parent feels that the school did not follow its policy correctly, or it does not appear to have a policy, they can contact the Minnesota Department of Education for assistance. The agency will first determine whether the complaint falls within its jurisdiction, and will open an investigation if it does, Traynham said.
The process could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, she said. If the school does not have a policy, the agency will require it to create one. If it has a process, but did not properly follow the process, the agency will identify what went wrong and how the district can better follow its own practices in the future.
MDE also offers “opportunities for restorative work” between students, or between the student and the school, Traynham said. That way, “healing and restoration” can occur so that students will feel supported when they return to school, she said.
“We are absolutely committed to ensuring that our school environments are safe spaces for students,” Traynham said. “We want to ensure that these spaces are spaces for belonging, that kids feel cared for, that they feel like they’re part of their community.”
When should I contact the Minnesota Department of Human Rights?
If a student is experiencing harassment on the basis of a protected class status, like gender identity or national origin, and talking directly to the school doesn’t solve the problem, Rohn recommends both contacting the Minnesota Department of Education and filing a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. That’s the agency responsible for enforcing Minnesota’s human rights law.
The Minnesota Department of Human Rights will investigate the complaint of discrimination. Those complaints can include a school failing to take appropriate action when students are harassing other students. But the agency also investigates other forms of discrimination — for example, if a staff member discriminates against a student.
Lucero, the department’s commissioner, emphasized that this is a lengthy process. Most cases take one to two years to resolve. Under state law, the agency must complete its investigation within 31 months.
“We are not an emergency service,” she said. “We’re looking for long-term changes.”
What happens when MDHR gets involved?
Since July 2021, MDHR has found probable cause of discrimination in four education cases. One involved racial discrimination. The other three involved male staff members sexually harassing or assaulting a female student.
In 40 cases in that same time frame, MDHR found no probable cause of discrimination, often finding that the school had handled the situation appropriately. Another 19 cases had different outcomes, including lawsuits, referral to a different government agency, and mediation, in which Lucero said the agency has invested “quite a bit” in recent years.
In the racial discrimination case, the mother of an Asian student filed a charge of discrimination against Pine City Public Schools in July 2021. She cited examples of students racially harassing her daughter from February through May 2021, and said that the administration had not taken adequate action to protect her daughter. She also alleged that the district had retaliated against her daughter for participating in demonstrations to call attention to racism at school.
In December 2023, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights issued findings of probable cause that the district had subjected the child to racial harassment and retaliated against her. The agency said the school inconsistently disciplined students engaging in racial harassment, and that it should have been “abundantly clear” to the school that the consequences it imposed were “not effective at stopping the harassing behavior.”
The agency also found that the district retaliated against the student for reporting the harassment. “Respondent punished Child more severely and frequently for minor comments than it did numerous other students for egregious racial slurs and harassment,” the agency wrote in its findings.
A year after issuing its findings, in December 2024, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights reached a settlement with Pine City Public Schools. The district must pay the student $65,000 and make changes to its policies and procedures for preventing discrimination and harassment.
