Sponsors (163)
Official title: To prevent harassment at institutions of higher education, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 18, 2025 by Mark Pocan · Last progress September 18, 2025
The bill strengthens campus harassment prevention, services, transparency, and accountability with dedicated federal funding and preserved civil‑rights remedies, but it increases costs, administrative burdens, legal complexity, and potential privacy risks for institutions, taxpayers, and individuals.
Students at participating colleges will get clearer harassment policies plus expanded prevention, counseling, and redress services, improving campus safety and support.
The bill authorizes sustained grant funding ($50M/year through FY2026–2031), giving colleges multi‑year funding certainty to plan and maintain anti‑harassment programs.
Grants and program provisions support faculty/staff training and a publicly available evidence‑based best practices report, helping institutions adopt proven prevention and response strategies nationwide.
Colleges and universities will face increased administrative and compliance costs to develop, publish, track policies and reports, and to comply with multiple statutory requirements.
Taxpayers are authorized to cover $300 million over six years for the program, which diverts federal funds that could be used elsewhere.
Preserving multiple overlapping legal standards (this Act plus Title VI/IX/504/ADA) increases the risk of parallel or duplicative litigation and legal uncertainty for institutions and claimants.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires most HEA‑participating colleges to publish anti‑harassment policies (including electronic harassment) in annual reports and funds grants to improve prevention and response programs.
Requires most colleges and universities that participate in federal higher education programs to adopt and publish an anti‑harassment policy in their annual institutional report that covers harassment (including via text, social media, and other electronic communications) based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion. Establishes a new competitive grant program (up to 3–5 years per award) with $50 million authorized per year for FY2026–FY2031 to create, expand, or improve campus programs to prevent and respond to harassment, and directs evaluation, reporting, and a federal best‑practices publication. Preserves existing civil‑rights enforcement under Title VI, Title IX, Section 504, and the ADA, and requires institutions to include specific procedural elements in policies (timely action, notice of outcomes, possible sanctions, counseling referrals, and a designated office or employee to receive reports).