SCOTTSBORO, Ala.—Two female students at Alabama’s Scottsboro High School attended the prom together hours after a judge’s ruling defeated the school board’s efforts to block the gay teens.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John Graham ruled April 5 that the board could not ban Chelsea Overstreet and Lauren Martin from the junior-senior prom at the town’s civic center that night.

“It’s something they had been planning for a year,” Martin’s mother, Connie Farrington, said at a news conference at their attorney’s office. “Just like every other child, she was ecstatic.”

School officials told the girls they could not attend the prom as a couple the day before spring break two weeks ago, their mothers said.

“It was a big letdown” for the girls, she said.

Graham’s decision cited two federal court rulings. In one, the U.S. Supreme Court said states and state agencies “cannot set-out homosexuals for special treatment.” The other prohibits public schools “from barring same-sex couples from school functions.”

Overstreet, a 17-year-old junior, wore her prom dress while 16-year-old sophomore Martin had on a tuxedo.

“This is just a dance,” Edmiston said. “Adults need not get involved.”