H.R. 5486: Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2025

H.R. 5486, the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2025, takes the public campus security report colleges already publish and bolts a harassment policy onto it. Any college that participates in federal student aid — which is nearly all of them, foreign schools excluded — would have to write down and distribute a policy covering harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion.

The bill defines sex broadly: it includes sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy and related medical conditions, sex stereotypes, and intersex traits. The policy has to cover harassment that happens on campus, off campus, in dorms, and — pointedly — through email, apps, mobile services, and other technology.

The policy can't just be a statement of disapproval. The bill requires it to lay out prevention programs, how a student reports an incident, how the school responds, the possible sanctions, what counseling and mental health services exist, and a named office responsible for receiving and tracking every report. Both the accuser and the accused must be told the outcome of any disciplinary process, and the school has to describe each pattern of harassment it sees and what it did about it.

The bill is named for Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers student who died by suicide in 2010 after his roommate secretly streamed him over a webcam — a case that became a national reference point for online harassment.

Separately, the bill creates a competitive grant program. The Department of Education could award grants to colleges, college-nonprofit partnerships, or same-state consortia to build prevention programs, counseling and redress services, and training. H.R. 5486 authorizes $50 million a year from 2026 through 2031 — $300 million in all.

The bill says it doesn't replace or shrink Title VI, Title IX, the Rehabilitation Act, or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Its requirements sit on top of those laws.