17-year-old Ceara Sturgis has never tried to hide her homosexuality. She’s out and proud. The honor student who plays the trumpet and serves as goalie on the school soccer team, doesn’t own a dress. So no one should have been surprised when she wanted her senior photograph in a tuxedo used in the 2009-2010 yearbook, but school officials balked at her request, saying in a letter that only boys could wear tuxedos.

Traditionally, female students dress in drapes and males wear tuxedos, but the school district has no policy in place banning "cross-dressing" and a policy that "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or sex."

“I think I have just as much right as everyone else to be in that yearbook,” Ceara Sturgis said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi got involved, issuing a demand letter to Principal Greer to publish the picture of Sturgis in the tuxedos. The ACLA says it gave the school until October 23 to respond before pursuing court action, said Kristy L. Bennett, the ACLU’s legal director.

The school district said “no” to the demand letter, but Sturgis has no plans of backing down despite knowing that litigation could take months or even years and by that time graduation will have come and gone.

“I am taking a stand for all the other people who weren’t allowed to be in the yearbook for the same situation, and maybe, I can win this,” she says.

The ACLU says the teenager’s constitutional rights are being violated, citing similar cases that have been successfully challenged in court in other states, including same sex-prom couples and girls wearing tuxedos to proms.

“You can’t discriminate against somebody because they’re not masculiing enough or because they’re not feminine enough. She’s making an expression of her sexual orientation through this picture and that invokes First Amendment protection,” Bennett said.

What do you think? Should Ceara Sturgis be allowed to wear a tuxedo in her senior photo?