This article examines the role of courts in rural sexual minorities’ lives. It focuses first on state action, explaining that courts’ failure to apply heightened scrutiny to sexual orientation classifications harms rural sexual minorities uniquely in family and employment law contexts, where judges explicitly invoke antigay rural norms to justify discriminatory treatment. It argues that by taking rural sexual minorities’ relative political powerlessness into account in Equal Protection claims, courts are more likely to find that all sexual orientation classifications are suspect. It focuses second on private discrimination, and it discusses ways to protect and strengthen rural sexual minorities’ privacy rights. It argues that privacy is central to protecting sexual minorities’ liberty to live, create families, and work in rural environments.