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At school this week, all the students planned to take part in the #walkout movement—walking out of class and standing in the halls in protest of gun violence in schools. Students at plenty of other schools walked out of their classrooms, but our school was put into lockdown mode to stop the demonstration. Can the school do that? Doesn’t that violate our free speech rights?

The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment protects your expression. But, the First Amendment also has an Establishment Clause, which bars any government actor, like your public school, from promoting an establishment of religion. In general, schools have wide authority to shut down speech solely because it is religious. Whether they can shut down speech under the Establishment Clause or if it is protected under the Free Speech Clause depends on two questions: (1) whether the students hearing the message are a “captive audience,” and (2) whether the student’s statement constitutes religious speech.