President Trump has repeatedly called out National Football League team owners in the partially tax-subsidized league for allowing player protests during the national anthem. Americans aren’t convinced that team owners have the right to order their players not to protest, but they don’t support the tax breaks the league is receiving.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of American Adults believe professional sports team owners have the right to demand players not engage in public political protests. Forty-three percent (43%) of adults say owners do not have that right, and nine percent (9%) aren’t sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on October 10-11, 2017, by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.