Campus Harassment Bill Sets Escalating Fines for Schools That Ignore Antisemitism, Adds Religion to Civil Rights Law

The Preventing Antisemitic Harassment on Campus Act of 2025 is fundamentally about two things: expanding civil rights protections and establishing serious financial muscle to enforce them on college campuses. This bill amends Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which governs federally funded programs, to explicitly include religion as a protected category alongside race and national origin. This means that if a university or any program receives federal cash, they generally can’t discriminate based on religion anymore. For students and faculty, this is a clear federal mandate protecting religious identity.

The New Standard for Campus Harassment

For anyone on a college campus, the bill clarifies what constitutes actionable discrimination. It states that discrimination now includes a school being “deliberately indifferent” to harassment that is “severe, widespread, and obviously offensive”—conduct so bad it effectively blocks a student from getting equal access to education. Think of it this way: if the harassment is so pervasive that a student feels they can’t safely attend class or use campus resources, and the administration ignores it, that’s now explicitly defined as discrimination under this law. The bill makes it U.S. policy to fight antisemitism under Title VI with the same rigor as any other form of discrimination, defining it as hatred directed at Jewish people, their property, or institutions.

Escalating Fines: Hitting Schools Where It Hurts

This is where the rubber meets the road for university budgets. The bill introduces mandatory, escalating fines for federally funded programs found to have repeat violations of antisemitic discrimination within a five-year period. A second violation triggers a fine of at least 10% of that specific program’s annual federal funding, continuing every year the violation persists. A third violation? That fine jumps to at least 33% of the program’s funding. To put that in perspective, if a university’s engineering program gets $10 million in federal grants, a third strike could cost them over $3 million annually until they fix the problem. This is a massive financial deterrent designed to force immediate administrative action, not just a slap on the wrist.

The Religious Exemption Carve-Out

Here’s the detail that requires a closer look: while the bill expands anti-discrimination protections to include religion, it includes a significant exception. Programs or activities that are run by, connected to, or controlled by a religious organization are exempt from the rule against discriminating based on religion. This means a federally funded religious student group or a religious university program can still make decisions based on religious criteria, even while receiving federal money. This carve-out is intended to protect religious freedom, but critics often worry that such broad exemptions can be used to justify discrimination against other protected groups (like LGBTQ+ individuals) under the guise of religious adherence, even in a program receiving taxpayer funds.

Broader Anti-Discrimination Checks

Section 4 introduces a fascinating requirement for federal agencies and courts. When investigating a Title VI complaint (say, about racial discrimination), they must now also look at how well the entity has handled discrimination based on other protected grounds (like sex or disability). They must also check how the entity has treated other groups based on the same reason being investigated. This means a school being investigated for antisemitism might also have its history of handling other forms of religious discrimination examined. The intent is to encourage a holistic approach to civil rights compliance, ensuring that institutions aren't just cleaning up one area while neglecting others.