A bill bolstering the Solomon Amendment, a federal law that denies funds to colleges that bar military recruiters from their campuses, was approved by a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Tuesday.

The bill, known as the ROTC Military Recruiter Equal Access to Campus Act (HR 3966), would require colleges to treat military officials in the same manner as other potential employers and would impose stiffer penalties on colleges that refused to comply with the law.

Some colleges have been reluctant to welcome military recruiters because the Pentagon's policy against gay and lesbian members of the armed forces violates the colleges' own antidiscrimination policies.

The legislation, which was approved by the Armed Services Committee and is likely to go to the floor of the House next week, follows several lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of both the military-recruiter law and the Defense Department's interpretation of it. The suits have been brought by organizations at more than a dozen law schools, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Rep. Mike Rogers, an Alabama Republican who introduced the bill, said the lawsuits were a factor in the proposed legislation. "While addressing recent court cases is one issue with this bill, even more important is we help ensure military recruiters have equal and fair access to our country's most highly educated students, just like any other employer recruiting on campus," he said in a written statement.

The bill would prohibit colleges that do not comply with the law from receiving financing from the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, and Justice, among other federal agencies, and would require colleges to allow the Defense Department to maintain a unit of the Senior Officer Training Corps on their campuses.

It would also force colleges to grant military recruiters "access that is equal in quality and scope" to that given to other recruiters, such as the use of conference rooms and career services.

That provision violates universities' right to free speech, said Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College and the founder of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, an association of 15 law schools that filed the first of the lawsuits against the Defense Department.

"The government shouldn't condition grants and contracts with universities on whether the university is willing to be their agent of 'don't ask, don't tell,'" he said, referring to the Pentagon's policy covering gay and lesbian members of the armed services.

In the past, law schools voiced their disapproval of the policy by treating military recruiters somewhat differently from others. For instance, at the University of Pennsylvania, the main career center, rather than the law school, scheduled law students' interviews with military recruiters.

But in 2001, the Defense Department stopped tolerating such disparities. It began sending letters to law schools charging that military officials had been "inappropriately limited in their ability to recruit."

Mr. Greenfield said the bill's attempt to clarify the Solomon Amendment proved a point he had already argued in court: The Defense Department has been "interpreting the statute more aggressively" than was intended in the law. "They realize they're overreaching," he said.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Hawaii Democrat, spoke out against the bill in a committee hearing on Tuesday. In a later interview, he called the proposal to withhold federal financing "coercive" and said, "You don't punish an entire university system because you don't like what some people are doing." He suggested that the Defense Department allow the courts to settle the issue.

"I find it ironic that the military says they want to have nondiscrimination and equal access, but they still say they don't want to have gay people," Mr. Abercrombie said. "That chicken has come home to roast them."