As we enter Pride month, I am reflecting on the interconnectedness of our joy and our struggle.

I am struck by the fact that Pride and Immigrant Heritage month begin just as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Jewish American Heritage Month end. Though Pride should be about our intersectional struggle for freedom, it has not always felt that way.

As I think about all the communities gathering virtually and in-person to celebrate the power and resilience of our queer communities, it’s essential to name what our trans, Asian and Pacific Islander, Indigenous, Jewish, Muslim, and Black communities in the U.S. might also be carrying into this month.

Over the last year, anti-trans bills swept through the country, targeting trans youth and athletes and impacting trans and non-binary individuals everywhere. As Chase Strangio reminds us, more anti-trans bills became law in 2021 than in the previous 10 years combined.

Throughout the last year and a half, our AAPI families and communities have experienced horrific acts of violence and harm, the most recent escalation of racism that has impacted AAPI communities across the United States.

In 2020 alone, Native Americans, Tribal, and Indigenous communities endured a devastating year highlighting the disparities and inequities that Native communities have experienced for centuries. Yet another reminder of the original sin of the nation — colonization, white supremacy, and genocide that remain unaccounted for and unacknowledged to this day.

Over the last month, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic rhetoric, desecration of sacred spaces and Jewish businesses, and assaults. These attacks are not new and are part of a long and devastating history of violence against Jewish people in the United States.

Our Muslim families and communities continue to experience Islamophobia that impacts their safety, places of worship, freedom of movement, and livelihoods in the U.S. Our Muslim communities experience this harm in every corner of our country — it is interpersonal, institutional, and systemic.

Our Black communities continue, daily, to experience state violence, institutional racism, and the impact of 400 years of white supremacy and anti-Black oppression.

These struggles, and so many more, are at the heart and purpose of Pride. If Marsha and Sylvia taught us anything, it’s that if Pride doesn’t include all of us, it doesn’t hold meaning for any of us. If we’re not marching for our collective liberation, we might as well not march at all.

Pride is our fight for racial justice.

Pride is the end of anti-Asian violence and racism.

Pride is speaking up against antisemitism, putting our bodies in front of xenophobia, and demanding justice and peace for our Muslim siblings.

Pride is denouncing colonization and honoring the original inhabitants of this land.

Pride is disability justice, fat liberation, and a love letter to Black femmes who continue to build movements of self-care and bodily autonomy.

Pride is decriminalizing sex work, stopping the war on drugs, and ending the over-policing of our communities.

Pride is an end to mass incarceration and a fight against institutionalizing our communities.

Pride is protecting trans youth and uplifting trans and non-binary leadership.

Pride is not just “love is love,” Pride is liberation is liberation.

This year, as our parties and celebrations reemerge, we have a chance to build on the sacred legacy with which we’ve been gifted. Dance in the streets, march with joy, and never stop fighting.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued a decision interpreting the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a federal anti-hacking law from the 1980s which has proven ill-suited to the modern internet. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Van Buren v. United States, narrowing the scope of the CFAA, will have positive consequences for online civil rights testing, research, and data journalism.

At first glance, the decision may not seem obviously related to civil rights enforcement. The case concerned a police officer who searched for information about a license plate in a law enforcement database in exchange for money. The officer was criminally charged with “exceed[ing] authorized access” under the CFAA because he violated his employer’s computer use policies. The Supreme Court held that the CFAA should not be read to criminalize violations of computer use policies alone, but instead prohibits behavior akin to breaking and entering — i.e. accessing parts of a computer that someone does not have authority to access at all.

This ruling is critically important for the twenty-first century civil rights investigations and data journalism that hold powerful platforms accountable. For many years now, the federal government and lower courts have interpreted the “exceeds authorized access” language in the CFAA to prohibit violations of website terms of service — those unilaterally imposed, self-serving conditions written by companies, and which most internet users never read. As the Supreme Court recognized, under this interpretation, you could be criminally liable for using a pseudonym on Facebook, or embellishing a dating profile in violation of website terms.

But websites’ terms of service not only risked turning everyday internet behavior into a crime, they were a barrier to modern civil rights testing — an investigative process meant to ferret out discrimination online. Testing websites’ algorithms to see how they distinguish among users on the basis of race, gender, age, or other protected class status often requires violating website terms of service. This kind of investigative testing is a critical mechanism for exposing discriminatory practices in housing, credit, and employment, among other areas.

The ACLU’s amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of civil rights researchers and journalists provided examples of how these restrictive terms could interfere with civil rights testing.

Website prohibitions on the use of inaccurate or incomplete information would prevent the creation of tester accounts or fictitious profiles that vary only along one attribute like race or gender. Sharing log-in information is often necessary for researcher collaboration. Prohibitions on the use of any automated means to capture information, including scraping, would inhibit efficient testing. Some terms even prohibit any attempt to understand the mechanisms or systems underlying a service.

When researchers had to fear the threat of criminal or civil liability under the CFAA for terms of service violations, many understandably chose to forego investigations they might have otherwise undertaken. And because of this threat of liability, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2016 on behalf of academics and journalists to challenge the constitutionality of the CFAA. Our case resulted in a district court decision that the CFAA does not criminalize website terms of service violations alone. Now, the Supreme Court has validated that interpretation, clearing the way for researchers and journalists to use common investigative techniques online without the fear of CFAA liability.

The important work of algorithmic auditors, data journalists, and other researchers has already led to groundbreaking studies on the ways that automated systems and platforms are affecting our lives. Limiting the scope of the CFAA is a welcome step to encouraging many more people to undertake the necessary work of civil rights enforcement in the digital age.