In 1980, a federal court upheld high-school senior Aaron Fricke’s right to bring his male date to the prom. The court also ruled that how other students might react to Aaron and his date did not justify banning them.

Supreme Court and federal court cases since then have strengthened the argument that any policy or action that excludes same-sex couples from proms and dances, as well as any policy adopted as a pretext for such discrimination, violates the rights to free expression and association guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

A federal court upheld this fundamental right to equal treatment in 2008 in Scottsboro, Alabama. The court ordered Scottsboro High School to let two female students attend the prom together and defeated the school board’s efforts to block them.

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