Is "cum laude with honors" meaningful or a tautology in the US? In the following video, an expert witness is relating her academic background and, at one point she states that she graduated &quot;cum laude with honours&quot;.  Having looked at various sources I can see that different countries give somewhat different emphases to these terms.

Skylar Richardson Trial Day 3 Dr Susan Brown - Forensic Pathologist
Part 2 &amp; Dr Christa Latham
video

Question
As a US citizen, is the doctor:
(a) making a valid distinction between the two terms &quot;cum laude&quot;
and &quot;with honours;&quot;
(b) explaining/translating cum laude to the jury;
(c) making her qualification(s) sound grander than they are; or
(d) something else?
EDIT - See comment by @Dan Romik pointing out that (b) and (c) appear to be asking for mind-reading on the part of anyone who answers. I accept this criticism but won't change the question at this point.
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.