Is "cum laude with honors" meaningful or a tautology in the US?
There is no doubt in my mind the person in question earned two different distinctions, and used them correctly. Here are some examples at how they might be used throughout the US.

At my undergraduate institution, &quot;Latin honors&quot; (cum laude) were solely a function of your overall GPA. The minimum to earn each distinction was a percentile determined from the previous year's distribution. (so the 90th percentile in 2020 becomes the minimum for cum laude in 2021). At that school, it was by college, not department, e.g. College of Arts and Sciences or College of Engineering.

cum laude was the 90th percentile, or a GPA &gt;= 3.79 (Arts and Sciences)
magna cum laude was the 97th percentile, or a GPA &gt;= 3.89.
summa cum laude was the 99.5th percentile, or a GPA &gt;= 3.97.


At my graduate institution, you have to complete an extra thesis to be eligible. At Aliden's, you had to be enrolled in the honors program to earn Latin Honors at all.

My undergrad had various &quot;Honors.&quot; I graduated &quot;cum laude with College Honors,&quot; it says so on my diploma. I was just about 0.01 GPA point shy of magna, sigh.

&quot;with Honors&quot; was a distinction earned by taking classwork in the Honors College, which you had to be admitted into.

&quot;with Departmental Honors&quot; was earned based on departmental requirements, often a thesis, where one wasn't required.

&quot;with College Honors&quot; was completing both college and departmental programs.



Finally, there is also &quot;with (high) distinction,&quot; which is also often based on GPA.


Likely the person in your question completed some sort of honors curriculum or thesis (hard to tell what) as well as had a high GPA.