The case had nothing to do with the Washington Redskins specifically, or even Native American stereotypes and slurs, but the ruling could have a major impact on the NFL's most polarizing team name.
The federal government can not refuse to grant protection to trademarks that some consider offensive, the U.S. Supreme court ruled Monday.
Today's ruling marks the end of a legal saga that started nearly eight years ago when the United States Trademark and Patent Office attempted to prevent The Slants, an Asian-American band, from trademarking their name on the grounds that "slants" disparages Asian Americans.
In 2015, Tam won a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The court's ruling came in a case brought by a band named "The Slants," which also lost its trademark protections after the trademark board said the moniker was disparaging to Asians and Asian-Americans.
In a unanimous judgment that splintered on its reasoning, the Supreme Court correctly held that the "disparagement clause" of the Lanham Act (the federal trademark law) violated the Constitution.
The band's lawyers argued that the government can not use trademark law to impose burdens on free speech to protect listeners from offense.
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Much of the rest of the league sees it differently, but only one person knows for sure and his mind is not made up on the issue. Williams-Goss, a 6-foot-4 guard, began his college career at Washington before transferring to the alma mater of John Stockton.
Slants founder Simon Tam said his goal was to reclaim a derisive slur and transform it into a badge of ethnic pride.
The Supreme Court ruled in a case involving the rock band "The Slants" that the government can't refuse to register trademarks that are considered offensive. That happened Monday, when the high court struck down, by an 8-0 vote, part of a 1946 federal law barring trademarks that may "disparage" people or groups. The trademark office canceled the football team's lucrative trademarks in 2014 after deciding that the word "Redskins" was disparaging to Native Americans.
Paul Fucito, a spokesman for the trademark office, said it is reviewing the decision and expects to issue new guidance for employees.
Simon Tam talks about founding the band in the video above, and how after being inspired by seeing Lucy Liu in Kill Bill he chose to stop being the "token" in the music industry and starting an "Asian-American project".
It is not popular and inoffensive speech that needs to be protected from censoring.
"A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all", Kennedy said in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The government argued that granting a trademark to The Slants effectively constituted a subsidy - citing a line of cases going back decades, they argued that the government is not required to sponsor or underwrite expression. The protections include blocking the sale of counterfeit merchandise and working to pursue a brand development strategy.
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