B.L. was 14 years old when she posted eight words on Snapchat that got her kicked off her school’s cheerleading team. She never imagined that four years later, her snap would be the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case.

While hanging out with a friend at a convenience store on a Saturday afternoon, B.L., our client and a high school cheerleader who hadn’t made varsity, posted “Fuck school fuck cheer fuck softball fuck everything” on Snapchat. The words were superimposed over a photo showing B.L. and her friend with their middle fingers raised. The snap disappeared 24 hours later, long before school resumed. Yet, her school responded by kicking B.L. off the cheerleading team for an entire year. Although B.L.’s snap may seem trivial, the stakes could not be higher. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in B.L.’s case, and the decision could alter the free speech rights of millions of students and young people across the nation.

The court’s decision in this case, B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, will define the scope of young people’s free speech rights whenever they are outside of school — whether they’re marching at a weekend protest or posting on social media — and determine whether schools have the right to punish students for speech and expression in these out-of-school contexts. Today, the ACLU, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP filed a brief arguing that outside of school, young people should have every right to express themselves and voice their opinion without worrying if their school will punish them for it.

Fifty years ago, the court ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” However, under current law, school administrators can discipline students for speech inside school that is deemed likely to be “disruptive” or that interferes with the rights of others. That is not the standard that should apply once young people leave the school or a school-sponsored activity. At that point, they should be free to speak without fear that a principal or school administrator will punish them if they find their speech “disruptive.” The question before the court in this case is what happens beyond school — do young people keep their full free speech rights when they are off campus, or are they always subject to having their expression policed according to the lower protection they have as students in school?

Giving school officials power to monitor and punish off-campus speech just because they deem it “disruptive” would put an unprecedented limit on the free speech rights of students and all young people. Students’ off-campus speech can be punished if it threatens violence or engages in harassment or bullying, much like adult speech can be. But extending the in-school standard outside of school could lead to schools preventing young people and students from criticizing school policies, raising important concerns about racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic or just plain inappropriate behavior by school staff or other students, talking about religion, making a joke, or using profanity to emphasize frustration. Young people’s speech rights everywhere would be limited to what they can say in school.

In the past, schools have punished students for what they considered “disruptive” expressions inside school, including speech on racial justice and other social issues. For example, authorities have punished Latinx students for wearing shirts that read “We Are Not Criminals” to protest anti-immigrant legislation, religious students for speaking out against abortion or quoting Bible verses, and have punished students for displaying a Black Lives Matter slide as a background during remote school.

These examples of discipline show how often school officials misuse their authority to police student speech. Giving them the power to police young people’s speech will have even worse results: Students won’t be able to discuss their views on racism, national policy, or religion even outside of school. And, as with most government authority, it’s not hard to imagine how that power will be applied in discriminatory ways. In fact, we’ve already seen schools misuse their power in troubling ways to punish young Black people for what they say outside of school, including for posting a photo of a memorial commemorating a girl’s deceased father, a photo of a boy “holding too much money,” rap music videos, and posts calling out racist slurs used by their white classmates.

Protecting students’ and young people’s full free speech rights when they are outside of school is vital. Taking away that safeguard would have a chilling effect on free speech, deterring young people from engaging in political, social, or religious expression out of fear of punishment. If schools could control young people’s speech rights outside of school like they do inside, young people could never express themselves freely. They’d learn that, in our society, saying anything controversial, unpopular, or critical of the established order can lead to punishment. That’s certainly not the lesson that schools, or the Supreme Court, should be teaching.

This photo of Jodie Herrera’s reproductive freedom mural was provided by the ACLU of New Mexico. See more of Herrera’s work here.

Even though the Trump administration has ended, threats to reproductive rights have not. In the first months of 2021, states have introduced nearly 400 measures to restrict access to abortion in an effort to push abortion further out of reach or force the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade entirely. But reproductive freedom advocates aren’t taking this assault on our rights lightly: We’re fighting back. There are bright spots on the horizon. Just last month, our state, New Mexico, successfully repealed an abortion ban that had been on the books since 1969, and that we had been fighting to end for years.

We can’t understate the importance of this victory. If we hadn’t successfully removed the ban, and Roe were to fall, patients at any stage of pregnancy could have been forced to beg for permission to have an abortion in front of a panel of strangers. Anyone who performed an abortion outside of this inhumane process could have been charged with a felony. People receiving this care also could have been investigated and charged. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, outdated abortion bans still technically in place in other states could go back into effect.

New Mexicans no longer have to fear that reality. On February 26, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed S.B. 10, the Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act, into law. This bill is a repeal of New Mexico’s old, outdated abortion ban. It is validation of what we know: New Mexicans have long believed that politicians do not have any place in a person’s reproductive health care.

This victory did not come out of nowhere. In fact, efforts to repeal this ban failed before, in 2017, 2018, and again in 2019. We were several votes short just because of a few conservative lawmakers in the New Mexico Senate. In 2019 the measure failed by just three votes. So last May, we promised to work not only with our longstanding community partners and allied elected officials, but with our national organization to hold those lawmakers accountable. And that’s exactly what we did.

Together, the ACLU of New Mexico and the national ACLU organized a voter education and mobilization campaign. This voter education campaign zeroed in on key districts of state senators who voted to keep the abortion ban in 2019. In response, New Mexicans showed up and sent a clear message to these lawmakers: We support abortion rights. As a result, we wound up with a legislature that was willing to repeal this outdated law.

Then, we set our legislative strategy into motion. The Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act is a reminder of why efforts like these need to be led by on-the-ground activists and advocates. The Respect New Mexico Coalition in particular, co-chaired by Black and Indigenous women, has been a critical leader in this fight for years. As an intersectional movement of women, families, faith leaders, and medical providers, Indigenous, Black, and Latinx reproductive justice leaders alongside reproductive rights advocates, this coalition embodies what we know to be true: Reproductive health care impacts everyone in a community, and so must our organizing.

The bill had widespread support from a huge range of communities. Birth workers, nurses, and doctors testified and wrote public comments supporting the bill and their associations endorsed repeal. Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian leaders, religious leaders, legal experts, LGBTQ-plus folks, people of color, and people from rural communities all supported this bill. Both teenagers and people who experienced the world before Roe v. Wade supported this bill.

Several organizations worked with local artists to commission posters, murals, and other art to inspire respect for what reproductive justice looks like. The ACLU of New Mexico sponsored a mural by New Mexican artist and advocate Jodie Herrera. State Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena and state Sen. Linda Lopez, both women of color, were the fearless lead sponsors on this bill; they were joined by Speaker of the New Mexico House Brian Egolf, Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, Reps. Joanne Ferrary, Georgene Louis, and Debbie Armstrong. And, 23 other state senators signed onto S.B. 10 when it was introduced.

The consequences of this win extend beyond our state. With attacks on abortion access in Arizona and the constant barrage of anti-abortion measures in Texas, it is critical that New Mexico remain a haven for reproductive health care for all pregnant people. As states around the country continue to dismantle abortion protection and access, we can now start to look forward and work to expand access to care, making abortion care, birth control, and period products even more equitably available, improving gender equity, and increasing training opportunities among medical professionals and birth workers to prevent maternal and infant mortality.

So, here is what we know: When we work together, locally and nationally, and mobilize all of our resources, we win. And that’s what we’ll continue to do. Together, our legislatures can reflect the will and needs of communities across the country.