out of luck

You can't ask a customer, “Stop buying books on Amazon,” with an asterisk: “Except when you need to buy an e-book, in which case, you're out of luck.”

“If you get an erroneous ruling, you are out of luck.”

“When I was serving time, I also met people out of luck who told me that if I ever decide to leave Iran, they can help me do that,” Rasoulof says.

White children, too, were often out of luck.

“If you were a woman who didn’t want to dress that way, you were kind of out of luck.”