Native Americans protest before the Minnesota Vikings and Washington game in Minneapolis. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)

Dan Snyder has something to be grateful for this holiday season—a split decision from the full bench at the Federal Circuit Court that calls the provision used to take away the Washington football team’s trademark “unconstitutional.”

The ruling is actually about a band called The Slants, who were refused a trademark because the Patent and Trademark Office said the name disparages Asian-Americans, Law360 reports.

“Many of the marks rejected as disparaging convey hurtful speech that harms members of oft-stigmatized communities,” wrote Kimberly Moore on behalf of a nine-judge majority. “But the First Amendment protects even hurtful speech.”

A decision this July by a federal judge in Virginia upheld the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s earlier ruling to uphold the team’s trademark cancellation. The appeal board said the team’s name and mascot is offensive to Native Americans and is “therefore ineligible under the Lanham Act for status in the federal trademark registry.”

The court’s decision today says that the “government cannot refuse to register disparaging marks because it disapproves of the expressive messages conveyed by the marks.”

The football team’s lawyers are making that same argument at the Fourth Circuit, and then some. The team’s profanity-laden brief included trademarks like Big Titty Blend, Take Yo Panties Off, and other products with names that could be deemed, “racist, or misogynistic, vulgar, or otherwise offensive.”

In separate dissents, two judges found the reasoning for barring The Slants’ trademark constitutional.