How Anoka-Hennepin Failed Its Bullied LGBT Students

As ThinkProgress reported earlier, the Department of Justice found through its investigation that Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District did not properly intervene when its students were harassed for their gender non-conforming identities. In the report, the DOJ profiled 10 current and former students, all of whom experienced verbal and often physical threats because of their perceived gender or sexual orientation and faced mental health and/or educational consequences when the district failed to mitigate the bullying. In most of the cases, the district placed burdens on the bullied student rather than take steps to interrupt the harassment, and in every case, the district had evidence that the harassment continued but did not take further action.