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The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were decades of increasing federal court involvement in school-related issues, however, because of school actions that violated the constitutional rights of students and their parents. Two aspects of the 14th Amendment have been extremely important in decisions regarding schools: the equal protection clause and the requirement for procedural due process .

The equal protection clause provides that no state shall “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Beginning in the years of the Warren Court (1953–1969), this clause has been interpreted to mean that a state may not make a free public education available to some children but not to others in the state and that the state must provide equal educational opportunity to all citizens within its jurisdiction. In the 1954 landmark Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, the Court made it clear that each state must provide equal educational opportunity to all children in its jurisdiction regardless of race. The Court ruled that the assignment of Black children to separate public schools is a denial of equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. In two important subsequent cases, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1971, 1972) and Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia (1972), the courts ruled that exclusion of children with handicaps² from public school education is a denial of equal protection.