Affirmative action, which was introduced at the national level by President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, called for the creation of the Committee of Equal Employment Opportunity in order to promote access and equity for minorities in programs utilizing federal funds.

College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board (1999) is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with the ability of Congress to exact waivers of sovereign immunity.

In Central Virginia Community College v. Katz (2006), the U.S. Supreme Court held that Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity, which protects states and their agencies from litigation, did not bar adversarial proceedings brought by a Chapter 11 bankruptcy trustee to set aside alleged preferential payments that operators of a bankrupt bookstore made to public institutions of higher education.

Cannon v. University of Chicago (1979) stands out as the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court recognized an implied cause of action for monetary damages under Section 901 of the Education Amendments of 1972, more commonly referred to as Title IX, in response to discrimination based on sex.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1983 opinion in Bob Jones University v. United States, Goldsboro Christian School v. United States, was a landmark decision in companion cases on tax exemptions for charitable giving to colleges and universities as well as K–12 schools.

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth (2000) is a U.S. Supreme Court case that addresses funding of student groups by a public university.

Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth is one of two key 1972 decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court that helped to establish the parameters of federal due process for employees in higher education.

In Board of Curators of the University of Missouriv. Horowitz (1978), the U.S. Supreme Courtreviewed the issue of whether officials at a publicuniversity’s medical school afforded one of theirstudents procedural due process when they tooksteps to dismiss her from an academic program.

Berea College v. Kentucky (1908) is a significantcivil rights case in higher education that paved theway for subsequent judicial decisions that struckdown segregated educational facilities as unconstitutional.