In Wake of Suicide, N.J. Gov Signs Bullying Law

Four months after a university student's suicidal leap from the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has signed a bill touted as the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation.

Christie signed the measure on Jan. 6, reported the New York Times that same day. Advocates say that the new law closes "loopholes" that allowed schools to do little or nothing under earlier anti-bullying measures. The new law extends protections to a wide population of youth, offering protections against harassment and bullying directed at sexual minorities, racial minorities, and everybody else. The law also extends past high school, including students at state universities.

LGBT advocacy group Garden State Equality hailed the bill. The organization helped draft the bill and promised to take an active role in ensuring that schools would adhere to the new law's provisions. "Garden State Equality now initiates its new Anti-Bullying Partnership--comprised of legal experts, educational experts, corporate leaders, bullied students and parents--to partner with schools, student organizations and parent-teacher organizations to make sure the new law is enforced," a Jan. 6 news release from the group said.

"The overwhelmingly bipartisan support for this landmark legislation will give impetus to other states across America, whether they are blue or red, to adopt anti-bullying laws just like ours," said Garden State Equality chair Steven Goldstein. The bill's specific, mandatory requirements mean that "The era of vagueness and loopholes in anti-bullying laws is over, and hope for our children has begun," Goldstein added.

"Under the new law, teachers and other school personnel must report incidents of bullying to principals on the same day as a bullying incident," the release said. "An investigation of the bullying must begin within one school day. A school must complete its investigation of bullying within 10 school days, after which there must be a resolution of the situation."

The release went on to note that the new law "provide[s] training to teachers in suicide prevention specifically with regard to students from communities at high risk for suicide." The law also extends to bullying that takes place on school buses, and covers incidents of cyber-bullying. Moreover, the law applies to public universities.

"The law applies to all bullied students," the release says. "In addition to protecting students based on the categories of actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression, the law has clear language protecting students bullied for any other reason."

"This is one of the great civil rights laws in New Jersey history," Goldstein told the New York Times, "and to have a fairly conservative Republican governor sign it sends a resounding signal to other states."

All but five of the Union's 50 states have some form of anti-bullying law on the books, but New Jersey's new statute sets a new standard, said advocates. "Other states have bits and pieces of what this New Jersey law has," said the Human Rights Campaign's Sarah Warbelow, "but none of them is as broad, getting to this level of detail, and requiring them, step by step, to do the right thing for students."

The bill had been in process since 2009, but after the suicide of 18-year old Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi last September there was a renewal in momentum to get the measure passed. In the end, only one lawmaker voted against it.

Clementi's death followed an alleged incident of cyber-spying by his roommate, who reportedly used a web cam to remotely observe Clementi's romantic interlude with another man. The young man's suicide was only one in a rash of youth suicides--many of them involving young gays--that became a focus of media attention late last year, noted CBSNews.com on Jan. 7.

Lawmakers took the occasion to speak out against bullying in schools. "New Jersey is sending a powerful message to every child that school will be a safe place for them to learn and grow, not a place for them to dread," state Sen. Barbara Buono, a Democrat, told the media.

"While learning to deal with hurt feelings and unkind treatment are part of growing up, there are certain children who are victims of constant, vicious threats and intimidation," state Sen. Diane Allen, a Republican, noted. "Not only does bullying jeopardize the victims' physical and emotional well-being, it impedes their ability to learn. I commend Governor Christie for signing this legislation into law."

Both lawmakers sponsored the bill.

A report published the day before Gov. Christie signed the bill examined suicide among gays, finding that younger GLBTs are more at risk for suicidal behavior. But even adults suffer increased anxiety and depression, which can lead to substance abuse. The report, Suicide and Suicide Risk in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Populations: Review and Recommendations, noted correlations between political and religious attacks on GLBTs and increased rates of anxiety and depression.

The report also noted that an estimate 3% of students in the nation's schools are GLBT, and cited a study that showed that youths who identify as heterosexual even if they have same-gender sexual encounters are no more likely than other self-identified heterosexuals to engage in suicidal behavior. Self-identified GLBT youths, however, were at markedly increased risk. Social stigma--and anti-gay behaviors such as harassment, rejection, and bullying--is thought to contribute to the elevated risk for GLBT youth. Another major factor, the report said, was the familial rejection that some gay youths face.

A conference on preventing suicide among GLBT youth took place in the state on the same day Gov. Christie signed the bill into law, reported the Associated Press on Jan. 6.

The Family Acceptance Project's Caitlin Ryan was keynote speaker at the event, the topic of which had been determined before Clementi's death. "The strong message should be that sexual orientation is a part of human development, and we really need to have education across all systems about supporting gay people," Ryan told the media. "Because LGBT young people are coming out at younger ages, there's a general lack of information in the systems that work with them."

"We know that one of the protective factors for suicide is family and peer connections," said Donna Amundson of the Traumatic Loss Coalitions for Youth Program. "The more that you can strengthen that, the better it's going to be; that's why we want to help these families help their kids embrace their identity and sexuality and help them to thrive."

Governors in other states have signaled that they may be receptive to bills designed to expand equality for GLBT citizens and their families. Newly elected New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for legal parity for gay and lesbian families; R.I. Gov. Lincoln Chafee also called for equality before the law for same-sex couples in his inaugural address.