A freshly pressed tuxedo shirt. A black bowtie and a crisp black tuxedo jacket, topped off by my curly red afro. On that day last fall, I knew I looked good. I felt like myself. I was so excited to take my senior class portrait. It was a rite of passage I’d been looking forward to for a long time.

I think back fondly on the memories I made at Harrison Central High School in Mississippi. I loved playing basketball with the Red Rebelettes, volunteering with the honor societies, or having so much fun with my friends. I take pride in my accomplishments and experiences.

Most of all, I am immensely proud of who I am – a gay woman of color.

I was eager to take my senior portrait for the yearbook and create a keepsake for my friends, family, and high school community to remember me for years to come.

With my school’s approval, my mom and I scheduled my portrait appointment at the local photography studio. When I arrived, the photographer told me that if I wore my tuxedo then my senior portrait would not be included in the yearbook. I was told my school district required girls to wear a drape – a black off-the-shoulder top that mimics the look of a formal gown. Only boys could wear tuxedos.

I was devastated.

Throughout high school I consistently wore traditionally masculine clothing. Wearing masculine clothing is a central part of the way I express my gender and my sexual orientation. I could not believe that based on my sex, I would be forced to either wear a drape, or have my senior portrait excluded from the yearbook.

My mom and I decided that I would not accept this unfair and sexist rule. I held firm and took my senior portrait – a photograph meant to represent me – in my tuxedo.

When my mom contacted Harrison County Superintendent Mitchell King to ask for my portrait to be included in the yearbook, she got an outright rejection. Superintendent King insisted on enforcing the school district’s requirement that girls must wear drapes for their senior portraits.

My mom kept fighting for my rights. She bought a full-page senior ad and included my senior portrait in it. But in late March, a school staff member told my mom that the principal hadn’t approved the use of my portrait in the ad yet.

By this time, I’d attended my senior prom, wearing – you guessed it – a tuxedo. I received nothing but compliments. No one said that my attire violated the dress code. I was utterly confused at this point. What was so wrong about me wearing a tuxedo in my senior portrait?

When I received my yearbook, I discovered that the school district had deleted me from the graduating senior section of the yearbook entirely. Not only did they refuse to use my portrait, they also refused to print my name, academic honors, sports, or activities. They deleted my portrait from the ad my mom paid for in the yearbook. It was as if my time at Harrison Central never happened.

Not being recognized in the yearbook really hurt. When I look at the senior section today, I see all my peers, I see where my name and accomplishments should have been, and yet I am not there. It feels like the school district erased who I am and what I have achieved.

Despite what happened with the yearbook, I was so excited for my graduation ceremony. I was going to graduate with high honors and experience this once-in-a-lifetime event. As the crowd waited for the seniors to walk the stage, the school played a slideshow with portraits of each member of the graduating class. My family eagerly waited to see my portrait, but it never came. The slideshow skipped right past me.

While I have happy memories of celebrating with my family, it still hurts that the school excluded my portrait from the graduation ceremony. But I won’t let the school – or anyone – stop me from choosing to be myself. The school has no right to try to shame me or erase me or my pride. I am looking ahead to brighter times, starting with playing basketball and studying sports management in college.

I am also committed to ensuring that the next student who shows up at the portrait studio is free to choose a tuxedo or a drape for their senior portrait based on who they are, not who the school thinks they should be. That’s why I joined other Harrison County students in fighting back against the School District’s discriminatory actions by filing a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. No student should be forced to conform to rigid sex stereotypes to take part in high school, let alone at capstone events like the yearbook and graduation.

You only graduate from high school once. Together with the ACLU and the community that supports my authentic self-expression, we won’t let schools silence, exclude, or erase us for taking pride in who we are and daring to be ourselves.

This month, the Supreme Court refused to consider a request by anti-abortion groups to impose nationwide restrictions on mifepristone, a safe medication used in most U.S. abortions and for miscarriage care. Without addressing whether mifepristone should be further restricted, the court found that these anti-abortion plaintiffs lack “legal standing” – meaning they do not have a sufficient connection to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of mifepristone to be able to challenge the agency’s decisions in court.

The court’s decision is a relief, but we should not be dazzled by the fact that the justices did the right thing based purely on a legal technicality. While the Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, extremist politicians have vowed to continue to use the courts and the law to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Below, we break down why this case matters, and what happens next.

The plaintiffs in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA are organizations and doctors who want to see all abortion banned nationwide. To further their agenda, they used junk science to target access to mifepristone, a medication used in most U.S. abortions. They filed this lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, where they could guarantee it would be heard by a Trump-appointed district court judge with a record of hostility to abortion. That district judge rubber-stamped all of their requests, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely did the same – overriding the consensus of the FDA and every leading national medical authority in order to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone.

In its decision, the Supreme Court did not address the plaintiffs’ arguments that mifepristone should be severely restricted. The court found that the lawsuit suffered from a critical defect: the anti-abortion groups and doctors who brought the case lack legal standing. As the court explained, these anti-abortion plaintiffs don’t prescribe mifepristone and have no actual connection to the FDA’s regulation of the drug. Instead, “the plaintiffs want [the] FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain.” But under the Constitution, “a plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”

For now, the court’s decision preserves the state-level patchwork access to medication abortion that has existed since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022. That means that, for the time being, people across the United States can continue to fill their mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order and retail pharmacies, just as they would for any other similarly safe medication – without having to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill. Health care professionals with specialized training, like nurse-practitioners, will also maintain the ability to prescribe mifepristone where state law allows. Furthermore, in the U.S. nearly 1 in 5 abortions relies on telemedicine. For many people – including low-income patients, people of color, folks in rural areas, and women in abusive households – retaining accessibility options, such as telemedicine, is essential – especially when it may be impossible to arrange and afford lengthy transportation and childcare, to secure time off work, or to escape the surveillance of an abuser in order to access time-sensitive care.

The court’s order also forestalls the dire consequences the American Cancer Society and many other patient advocacy groups warned of should the court override the FDA’s actions and undermine drug development and impede access to critical medications well beyond reproductive health care.

There is no credible dispute about mifepristone’s safety. The nation’s leading medical associations describe the science confirming its safety as “overwhelming.” While all drugs carry risks, medical experts have explained that mifepristone is among the safest medications used in medical practice today – safer than Viagra or penicillin – with serious complications experienced by fewer than 1 percent of patients.

By contrast, the plaintiffs’ evidence rested on testimony and research from a few anti-abortion doctors who travel the country peddling junk science about abortion safety. As the ACLU explained in a friend-of-the-court brief, when other courts have heard these folks testify, time and again, they have discredited them. For instance, Dr. Ingrid Skop – cited 17 times in the appellate court’s ruling– had her testimony on abortion thrown out by a Florida court two years ago for being “inaccurate.” Dr. Skop admitted under oath in 2020 that she is “not a really good researcher,” so it’s no surprise that her research on mifepristone was published by a fringe advocacy group known for promoting blatantly false conspiracy theories, such as that President Barack Obama hypnotized listeners with his speeches. Several of the studies relied on by these plaintiffs have been retracted because they are so profoundly flawed. Another study is based on 98 anonymous blogs.

Maintaining access to mifepristone has never been more crucial. Since it was approved in 2000, nearly 6 million people in the United States, and millions more globally, have used this medication. Today, medication abortion comprises almost two-thirds of all abortions in this country.

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The Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, but extremist politicians are waiting in the wings to continue this campaign to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Indeed, the same Trump-appointed district judge in Texas has already permitted Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri to intervene in the district court proceedings on the same side as the anti-abortion groups. And these extremist politicians have said that they will try to continue this case in Texas – even though the Supreme Court just found that the original plaintiffs lack standing – or else bring copycat lawsuits in other jurisdictions.

Moreover, in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will decide another abortion case that will determine whether politicians can force doctors to withhold emergency room care from their patients suffering severe pregnancy complications. These cases show how far politicians will go to prevent people from getting the reproductive health care they need.

Since Roe was overturned, every time an abortion issue has been put to the ballot, the people have voted in favor of access. Politicians are relentless in their attacks, but a majority of this country believes that people must have the power to make personal decisions during pregnancy. We’ll continue using every tool at our disposal to fight back against these cruel and deeply unpopular attacks on our health, our futures, and our bodily autonomy.

Join us in this fight to expand and restore our rights by urging legislators to pass federal legislation that safeguards our reproductive freedom – including abortion, birth control, AND IVF care.