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systems that ended desegregation decrees saw their schools quickly resegregate and minority test scores drop. When it was Teddy’s turn, he once again jabbed at the professor, trying to get him to admit that adding more blacks to Central would make little impact on the rest of the schools. Then he changed tactics.
    â€œLet me ask you point blank,” Teddy said. “What approach can we take in Jefferson County, Kentucky, to make both sides happy?”
    â€œWell,” Orfield replied. “Making everybody happy completely is usually . . .”
    â€œImpossible?”
    â€œYou don’t have a lawsuit if there’s an easy answer to that,” Orfield said.
    â€œIf this goes to the extent of eliminating the desegregation plan, everybody is going to be unhappy in the long run and your clients are going to lose very badly.”
    That fall, at Heyburn’s urging, the two sides had in fact tried to hash out a compromise that would allow Central to pull more students from its neighborhood while maintaining diversity. 8 CEASE offered to drop the suit if the school district allowed 150 additional black students to enroll at Central and created law and medicine magnets elsewhere to accommodate additional applicants. They also asked that 200 more black students be admitted at the district’s best-performing schools, including Ballard and Manual. The school board refused the proposal. CEASE reduced its request to 75 additional black students at Central. 9 The school board again refused, arguing that letting one school go out of balance would open the door to requests from every school in the district. The judge had hoped that over several days of hearings, the opponents might be convinced to sit down to talk again. But, as the hearings went on, that looked increasingly unlikely.
    Pat Todd, a spry blonde who favored cowboy boots and long skirts, ran the school district’s student assignment program. She had grown up in a conservative family in Oklahoma, but had moved to Louisville in the 1970s to teach at an all-black school in the inner city. 10 From there, she had ascended the ranks of administration and become deeply involved with the monitoring committee, taking charge of the district’s desegregation plan in 1996. She usually had the cheery demeanor of a kindergarten teacher, but with Teddy, her warmth faded.
    Throughout the hearings, he had attacked the school district over statistics that showed black students were more represented in South End schools like Fairdale, where poverty among whites was high and outcomes were low. At Manual, Male, and Ballard, where blacks were only a fifth of the population or smaller, the college-bound rates were more than 80 percent. And at Central, 86 percent of students went on to college.
    â€œAre there certain high schools in Jefferson County where African American kids have a better chance to go to a four-year college than other high schools?” Gordon asked.
    â€œNo, I do not accept your premise,” Todd replied.
    â€œYou don’t?” Teddy shot back. “Haven’t we eliminated 65 percentchance of having an equal opportunity to go to college because you make the choice rather than these parents?”
    â€œNo, sir,” Todd replied calmly.
    Leet jumped up. “Your honor, I object to that, whatever it is,” he said.
    â€œShe can answer,” the judge replied.
    â€œAnd I said no, sir,” Todd repeated.
    Teddy sat down.
    To the lawyers and witnesses in the room, it seemed that Gordon was twisting himself into a knot as he tried to argue simultaneously that black students were being discriminated against by the school system but that the vestiges of racial segregation were gone. The lawyers from the two third-party groups, QUEST and the Kentucky Alliance, took advantage of the awkward position CEASE was in as they tried to convince the judge that racial inequality was still pervasive throughout the district