Students often ask whether the examples we give as instructors have any relevance to their worlds, to their lives. Too often the answer is no. This paper describes a case that is obviously pertinent to both secondary and university students and their instructors. The legal battle over equality and racial discrimination in the New York City School system presents not simply a rich field for geographical consideration but also a pertinent one. It brings to students and their instructors a complex of economic, legal, and social issues played across a discrete spatial surface. As importantly, it offers a case study exploring the difficulties of both defining and then achieving distributive justice in post-modern environments in a context students and their instructors will recognize as relevant and timely. The discussion that results may be useful in economic, legal, locational, and social geographic instruction.