Independent experts are casting doubt on a widely cited study that claims “anti-transgender laws” in 19 states drove an increase in suicidality among gender-confused and same-sex attracted teens.
The study from Trevor Project researchers received widespread coverage from NBC, NPR, and CNN and other national outlets back in 2024, with several mental health professionals praising it as a meaningful step forward in establishing a causal link between red state laws and youth suicide risk.
“Anti-transgender” laws include restrictions on teens getting surgeries to permanently remove healthy reproductive organs or regulations that prohibit men from competing on girls’ sports teams.
But the ultimate finding may be corrupted, since the result only came from Idaho, which did not have in effect the laws cited.
In particular, the study found up to a 72 percent increase in youth suicidality. But the main driver of this was responses from Idaho, which did not have the specific laws in effect that supposedly drove the suicide risk among gender-confused youths.
Kathleen Kerr, an author of a new critique, provided further comments to The College Fix.
“The original publication gives the impression of a robust finding based on an analysis of tens of thousands of individuals and 15 states that passed laws,” the biostatistics director at the University of Washington said.
Kerr noted the limits of her own critique, which she said “does not analyze policy or make any policy recommendations.”
“Our goal was to give a careful assessment of the evidence underlying the claims made in the original study,” she told The Fix. She wrote the paper with J. Cohn and Peter Sim, researchers affiliated with the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine.
“Our commentary explained that the headline finding – large effects of the laws 2 and 3 years after they are enacted — was from a single state, Idaho, which contributed only a few hundred individuals to the study data,” she said. “It turns out the two laws in Idaho, one about sports and one about birth certificates, either never went into effect or were blocked by courts shortly after enactment.”
The two Idaho laws mentioned, HB 500 (the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act”) and HB 509 (regarding vital statistics and birth certificates), were both signed in 2020 and blocked just months later.
The authors of the original study wrote a response in Nature Human Behavior, where both articles were published, defending their research design.
They argued that “policy discussion may be a part of the policy impact itself,” so even if the laws were blocked, people may have been affected by the discussion of the law.
Furthermore, they argued “effects may have persisted in practice even while enjoined” and “the public discourse surrounding the passage of these laws would not have ceased when they were enjoined, providing a further plausible mechanism for sustained effects.”
In other words, discussing limits on transgender drugs and surgeries or debating sex-segregated sports could still have had an effect on the mental health of LGBT individuals.
The Fix attempted to reach corresponding author Ronita Nath as well as the Trevor Project for further comment on the criticism of the research, but none responded to emailed and media form inquiries in the past month.
Kerr discussed other problems in the research design. While she said difference-in-difference is an appropriate method, the Trevor Project researchers did not find similar states for the control. Difference-in-difference would look at states that passed transgender laws and those that did not.
“One way to maximize the plausibility that the assumptions hold is to select the control states (meaning states that did not enact laws) to be as similar as possible to the states that enacted laws,” she told The Fix.
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