diff --git a/python/cudf/cudf/core/indexed_frame.py b/python/cudf/cudf/core/indexed_frame.py
index 69b25c51a66..518262ae926 100644
--- a/python/cudf/cudf/core/indexed_frame.py
+++ b/python/cudf/cudf/core/indexed_frame.py
@@ -1961,6 +1961,11 @@ def drop_duplicates(
         ignore_index: bool, default False
             If True, the resulting axis will be labeled 0, 1, ..., n - 1.
         """
+        if not isinstance(ignore_index, (np.bool_, bool)):
+            raise ValueError(
+                f"{ignore_index=} must be bool, "
+                f"not {type(ignore_index).__name__}"
+            )
         subset = self._preprocess_subset(subset)
         subset_cols = [name for name in self._column_names if name in subset]
         if len(subset_cols) == 0:
diff --git a/python/cudf/cudf/tests/test_duplicates.py b/python/cudf/cudf/tests/test_duplicates.py
index 8a83ec150bc..f77e7b4d775 100644
--- a/python/cudf/cudf/tests/test_duplicates.py
+++ b/python/cudf/cudf/tests/test_duplicates.py
@@ -623,3 +623,9 @@ def test_drop_duplicates_multi_index():
             gdf[col].drop_duplicates().to_pandas(),
             pdf[col].drop_duplicates(),
         )
+
+
+def test_drop_duplicates_ignore_index_wrong_type():
+    gdf = cudf.DataFrame([1, 1, 2])
+    with pytest.raises(ValueError):
+        gdf.drop_duplicates(ignore_index="True")