After the tragic shooting at Minnesota’s Annunciation Catholic School, families across the country began asking if the shooter could have been stopped.

But Americans should also ask a related question: Why do states ban kids who think they’re transgender from even talking to therapists about accepting their biological sex?

The school shooter in Minnesota identified as transgender. Yet in half the states, including Minnesota, it’s illegal for therapists to help confused kids come to grips with who they really are.

Even bringing up this topic can put a therapist’s career at risk.

They can only tell these kids to go ahead with a sex change, pushing them toward experimental drugs and irreversible surgeries.

One brave Minnesota lawmaker is already fighting for common sense. On Aug. 30, state Rep. Drew Roach announced that he’ll introduce legislation to repeal Minnesota’s therapy ban.

As Roach said, “This inhumane law silences therapists, denies patients real options and imposes one political ideology on deeply personal medical decisions. That is not compassion — it is government overreach.”

He’s right. Kids who believe they’re born in the wrong body frequently struggle with serious mental health issues, with studies pointing to extremely high rates of anxiety, depression and other conditions.

The Minnesota shooter is a case in point. His suicide note showed signs of mental illness. He openly talked about his depression and said outright he was “tired of being trans” — a process he started at 17, if not earlier — and wished he’d “never brainwashed” himself.

Perhaps therapy could have helped him come to grips with who he was. 

Studies show the vast majority of kids who believe they’re transgender ultimately realize they aren’t.

Minnesota’s law went into effect after the shooter had become a young adult, so it didn’t prevent him from receiving therapy, yet other kids who believe they’re transgender are now legally blocked from talking to a mental-health professional about accepting their biological sex.

To be clear, such therapy isn’t the “conversion therapy” that activists claim it is and that lawmakers decry when passing these laws.  

Talking to a therapist about gender identity is an earnest and compassionate way to help confused kids realize who they are. There is no medical or moral reason to ban it.

In fact, in England, Sweden and Finland it’s the first-line approach.

And if anything, trying to change one’s sex seems more akin to conversion therapy, which the Minnesota law tacitly acknowledges by stating that gender transition is excluded from the definition.

Yet Minnesota isn’t alone in putting up that barrier. At least half of states, as well as Washington, DC, prohibit or restrict mental-health professionals from helping kids realize they aren’t the wrong gender.

One of my colleagues at Do No Harm, a licensed therapist in Oregon, was investigated by state authorities for talking to young patients about their gender identity.

She no longer sees patients who identify as transgender to protect herself.

Across the nation, therapists who are earnestly trying to help deeply confused kids are being threatened with the revocation of their licenses, depriving uniquely vulnerable patients from receiving real therapeutic care.

These state laws need to be repealed as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, that’s unlikely in places like Minnesota, where the Democrats in power are completely in thrall to transgender activists.

The Minneapolis mayor responded to genuine concerns about the shooter’s transgender identity by claiming that people were attacking the trans community.

But asking if confused kids need therapy isn’t an attack — it’s the definition of trying to come alongside troubled people with a helping hand.

If states like Minnesota won’t act, the federal government should.

The Trump administration has already mandated that federal health-insurance plans cover the kind of counseling that many states bar, giving federal workers and their families guaranteed access to therapy.

But the biggest hope is at the Supreme Court. On Oct. 7, the justices will hear a case challenging Colorado’s ban.

The plaintiff, a licensed counselor, says the law violates her First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.

She wants the court to restore her right to talk to deeply confused kids, and ultimately, help them accept their biological gender.

Fighting for this right isn’t the same as demonizing transgender people, despite activist claims to the contrary.

Nearly 14,000 kids received transgender treatments between 2019 and 2023 alone. It’s only human to admit that many are struggling and need real mental-health care, not drugs and surgeries.

By blocking kids from getting therapy, states like Minnesota are harming and isolating some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

It’s the opposite of compassion — and a tragedy that may beget more tragedy.

Dr. Kurt Miceli is medical director at Do No Harm.