sentences:  At the time, the land-grant university was involved in the notorious Knight v. Alabama lawsuit, in which the plaintiff class, joined by the U.S. Justice Department argued that the State of Alabama's system of public university funding is a violation of equal rights.The case resulted in a 1995 decree that ordered Alabama to fund engineering at Alabama A&M.The ruling further ordered that whatever level of the engineering program that would be built up in nine years would constitute the required level of funding by the state.