Bullying is not a crime by that name under federal law or in any state, but much of the conduct people describe as bullying is already criminal under other statutes. Assault, battery, stalking, criminal harassment, cyberstalking, hate crime enhancements, and swatting laws all reach the serious end of bullying behavior. What remains, the social cruelty and ridicule that falls short of those statutes, is generally handled by schools through required anti-bullying policies, and in some cases through civil lawsuits.
So the better question is not whether bullying is illegal in the abstract. It is which specific conduct crosses which specific legal line.
When Bullying Is Already a Crime
Prosecutors do not need a statute called “bullying.” They charge the behavior under laws that already exist in every state.
A shove, punch, or kick in a hallway is assault or battery. A credible threat of violence can be charged as assault even if no one is touched. Repeatedly following a classmate, surveilling them, or contacting them in ways that cause reasonable fear for safety is stalking. Flooding someone’s phone or inbox with threatening or abusive messages can be criminal harassment. Taking a classmate’s belongings is theft. Spreading sexually explicit images of a minor can trigger child pornography laws.
Most of these charges start as misdemeanors. They can escalate to felonies when a weapon is used, when the victim is seriously injured, or when the conduct also qualifies as a hate crime.
Hate Crime Penalties
When bullying targets someone because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, federal and state hate crime laws come into play on top of the underlying charge. The federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act makes it a federal crime to cause or attempt to cause bodily injury because of any of those characteristics, with penalties up to 10 years in prison, and up to life if the offense results in death or involves kidnapping or an attempt to kill.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 249 – Hate Crime Acts
Most states have their own hate crime statutes, and many add penalty enhancements that increase the sentence for any underlying offense motivated by bias.2United States Department of Justice. Laws and Policies A schoolyard assault that would otherwise be a minor misdemeanor becomes significantly more serious if prosecutors can show the attack was motivated by the victim’s identity.
Cyberbullying and Online Harassment
Online conduct is where bullying has become hardest for schools to contain and where criminal law has been most active. Federal law reaches the worst of it through the cyberstalking statute, which makes it a crime to use electronic communications to engage in a course of conduct that places someone in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, or that causes or would reasonably be expected to cause substantial emotional distress.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2261A – Stalking The statute requires intent to harass, intimidate, or surveil with intent to harm, and the communication must move through interstate channels, which nearly all internet and phone traffic does.
Swatting
One especially dangerous online tactic is swatting: calling in a fake emergency to send armed police to a victim’s home. Under federal law, conveying false information about an emergency that could reasonably be believed carries up to five years in prison. That rises to 20 years if someone is seriously injured, and up to life imprisonment if someone dies.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 1038 – False Information and Hoaxes
State Cyberbullying Laws
Many states have added cyberbullying statutes or expanded existing harassment laws to cover electronic communication. Some prohibit using a phone, computer, or social media platform to threaten or intimidate someone; others target posting private or sexually explicit information about a minor to cause emotional harm.
Several of these state laws have been struck down. A New York appeals court invalidated an Albany County ordinance that criminalized electronic communication with “no legitimate purpose” intended to “harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm,” finding it swept in too much protected speech. A North Carolina court reached a similar conclusion about a law criminalizing social media posts that “annoy” or “pester” a minor. The pattern is consistent: when legislatures write cyberbullying laws broadly, courts throw them out.
What Schools Are Required to Do
Every state and the District of Columbia has an anti-bullying law, but these laws do not criminalize bullying. They require school districts to adopt policies covering reporting procedures, investigations, staff training, and student education.5StopBullying.gov. Laws, Policies and Regulations Some states fold bullying prevention into health education standards.
Consequences under these frameworks are disciplinary: detention, suspension, or in severe cases expulsion. State laws usually leave the specifics to individual districts rather than dictating a particular punishment.5StopBullying.gov. Laws, Policies and Regulations
Bullying based on a student’s race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion also overlaps with federal civil rights law. Schools that receive federal funding must respond to this kind of discriminatory harassment, and failure to act appropriately can violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, or the Americans with Disabilities Act.6StopBullying.gov. Federal Laws Both the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice enforce these obligations.7U.S. Department of Education. Dear Colleague Letter – Harassment and Bullying Background, Summary, and Fast Facts
Students with disabilities get an additional layer of protection. Under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA, schools must address bullying based on disability that interferes with the student’s participation in school. If any bullying, even bullying unrelated to the disability itself, interferes with a disabled student’s access to educational services, the school may be failing its obligation to provide a Free Appropriate Public Education, and the student’s IEP or Section 504 team should reassess what services or changes are needed.8U.S. Department of Education. Disability Discrimination – Bullying and Harassment Parents can request that meeting in writing.
Why There Is No General “Bullying” Crime
The reason lawmakers have not created a sweeping criminal offense of bullying is the First Amendment. A lot of what people call bullying is speech: name-calling, rumors, exclusion, online ridicule. Hurtful speech is largely protected.
Courts have consistently held that speech cannot be punished simply because it is offensive, annoying, or embarrassing.9Cornell Law School. Fighting Words, Hostile Audiences and True Threats There are narrow exceptions. “True threats,” meaning statements communicating a serious intent to commit violence against a specific person, are unprotected, and in 2023 the Supreme Court held in Counterman v. Colorado that the prosecution must at minimum show the speaker was reckless about whether the statement would be understood as threatening. Fighting words and incitement to imminent lawless action are also unprotected. Insults, humiliation, and social cruelty generally are not.
Even when legislatures try to target genuinely harmful conduct, two doctrines keep knocking these laws down. Vagueness: a criminal statute has to define the prohibited conduct clearly enough that ordinary people know what is illegal, and a law criminalizing “bullying” without a precise definition fails because the line between normal social conflict and criminal behavior is left to guesswork. Overbreadth: even a law aimed at real harm can be struck down if it also prohibits a substantial amount of protected speech.10Cornell Law School. Overbreadth Doctrine That is what has happened to several state and local cyberbullying laws.
Civil Lawsuits Against Schools
When criminal law does not fit and school discipline falls short, families can sometimes sue. The main federal path is Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program receiving federal funding.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 U.S. Code 1681 – Sex
In Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that a school district can be liable for money damages when it has actual knowledge of student-on-student harassment that is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that it effectively denies the victim access to educational opportunities, and the district responds with deliberate indifference.12Justia. Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed., 526 U.S. 629 (1999) It is a high bar. A school that investigates complaints and takes some corrective action, even imperfectly, may not be deliberately indifferent. A school that ignores repeated reports is exposed.
Outside Title IX, many states allow negligent supervision claims against school districts. These require showing a duty of care, inadequate supervision that breached that duty, and injuries caused by the failure. Government immunity shields public schools in some situations, with exceptions that commonly apply when employees act with gross negligence or when a district ignores its own safety protocols.
When Parents Can Be Held Responsible
Parents can face consequences when their child engages in serious bullying. At least 42 states and the District of Columbia have laws similar to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, which can produce misdemeanor charges against parents who fail to exercise reasonable supervision.13Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Parental Responsibility Laws A smaller number of states have statutes specifically targeting negligent parental supervision.
On the civil side, most states make parents financially responsible for their minor child’s intentional harmful acts, though statutes typically cap damages, with caps generally ranging from around $5,000 to $30,000. Those numbers rarely cover the full damages in a serious case, but they do give parents a financial reason to take their child’s conduct seriously.