Of course it does. Just like David J. Freeman in church, they are protected from being jailed, or in any way punished by the state, because someone considers their protests offensive or unpatriotic.

As private business owners, the owners may negotiate a contract with their players—including one that requires the players to stand during the anthem. Whether the NFL players’s agreement gives the owners that power may very well wind up in court—but as a matter of contract, not constitutional, law.

But, if the owners were acting for the government—or under government threat or compulsion—then, as Sir Edward Plowden might once have said, the case is altered. The First Amendment really would come into play.

The First Amendment does not just protect the players against prosecution for crime. Under a long line of cases, it also forbids any kind of official retaliation because of their protected speech. Retaliation cases are a staple of public employee law; teachers, say, or other government workers may speak—outside of work—about public matters and find themselves demoted or fired not long afterwards. If the employee can show that the adverse action was taken because of the protected speech, then whoever ordered the retaliation can be sued for violating free-speech rights.

So what, right? The owners aren’t the government.

Or—are they?

If someone powerful—let’s say the president—uses threats, persuasion, and pressure to conscript the owners in his culture war; and if those owners, at the president’s demand, punish their players; then caselaw suggests those private figures may in a sense become the government—and thus can be sued as surely as a public official can.

Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu points to the case of Page v. Coyner, decided in 2010 by the Sixth Circuit. Martha Paige worked for a development company; as a private citizen, she appeared at a county hearing to oppose a road project. An outraged county official then called her employer and said (falsely) that Paige had used her company title in her remarks. Three days later, the company fired Paige.

She sued the official; the Sixth Circuit decided that, if the official called her employer as an act of retaliation, then the employer’s private action became “state action”—and thus could be the basis of a First Amendment lawsuit. (One judge wrote separately to emphasize that Paige need not prove that the county official “ordered” the employer to fire her, simply that the official exercised “coercive power” or provided ”significant encouragement, either overt or covert” that led to the firing.)

Even if the players prove retaliation, they still won’t be able to get damages from Trump; in a 1982 retaliation case, the Supreme Court held that a president, acting in official capacity, is immune from damage suits.

But what about the owners? Last I checked, they had really deep pockets. What if they, like the company in Paige, become “state actors”?