If you attend a public school, you have a constitutional right under the First Amendment to express yourself at school. (If you are a private school student, visit How Speech Rights are Different at Private Schools).

This includes not only the right to speak (or not speak) particular words, but also the right to share written materials with each other and to wear messages and images on clothing, buttons, or jewelry, without censorship or discrimination based on the ideas that the students wish to express.

In most cases, the First Amendment also protects students’ right to form groups like gay-straight alliances. It also protects students’ right to self-identify as LGBTQ or as allies.

Your school may not discriminate based on particular ideas by imposing extra restrictions or procedural hurdles. For example, your public school would be violating the First Amendment if it generally allowed students to wear written messages on their T-shirts but required students to receive prior approval for T-shirts supporting LGBTQ equality.

For more information about your right to participate in GLSEN's National Day of Silence, check out our fact sheet.

For more information about a particular jurisdiction, contact Lambda Legal at 866-542-8336 or visit www.lambdalegal.org/help.

Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of Maverick Couch, an Ohio student who wore a t-shirt with the slogan, "Jesus is not a homophobe" to school and was threatened with suspension and told to turn the shirt inside out.