The Supreme Court on Friday said that it will hear a case involving retirement plans for employees of Northwestern University.

The ruling, expected next year, will resolve the conflicting outcomes of similar cases involving retirement plans sponsored by big-name universities in the appeals courts, said Jerome Schlichter, whose St. Louis law firm, Schlichter, Bogard & Denton LLP, filed the case against Northwestern in 2016.

Spokespeople for Northwestern didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. District Court in Chicago dismissed the Northwestern case in 2018, a decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago upheld in 2020, Mr. Schlichter said.

In contrast, a similar case against the University of Pennsylvania was initially dismissed by the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia in 2017, said Mr. Schlichter, whose firm represents the plaintiffs in the case. But that decision was partly reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2019 and settled for $13 million on Jan. 14, he said.

Like a growing number of cases against colleges and universities, including Yale, Cornell, and the University of Southern California, the Northwestern case challenges the 403(b) plans’ use of retail share classes of mutual funds, rather than lower-cost institutional versions of the same investments.

The plaintiffs in the Northwestern case also contend that the plans’ arrangements with more than one record-keeper causes participants to pay excessive administrative fees. By selecting just one record-keeper, the plans could have used their size to bargain for lower fees, Mr. Schlichter said. The case involves two plans, said Mr. Schlichter. One has more than $3.3 billion in assets as of year-end 2019, according to BrightScope Inc., which tracks retirement plans.

“We have consistently contended that Northwestern breached its fiduciary duties to its employees and retirees, costing them substantial retirement assets,” Mr. Schlichter said. Mr. Schlichter said settlements in similar cases have been reached against universities including Emory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke. As part of the settlements, he said, many have made changes in their retirement plans, including switching from retail investments to lower cost institutional share classes.

Helping fuel the suits against universities and corporations, experts say, is the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Tibble v. Edison International, which put retirement plans on notice that they have a continuing duty to monitor plan investments, including fees.

Corrections & Amplifications
A lawyer whose firm filed a case against Northwestern University is named Jerome Schlichter. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his name as Schlicther. (Corrected on July 2)

Write to Anne Tergesen at anne.tergesen@wsj.com