Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.

If the Washington football team won’t change their team name, then lawmakers will force them to. At least that’s the method that many members of Congress are trying to do.

Yesterday, Rep. Mike Honda (D-Ca.) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would remove trademark protections of the team if they retain their current name. This comes after two similar bills introduced last year by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, which proposed stripping the NFL of their tax-exempt status is Washington continues to use its current team name.

But Rep. Honda’s bill differs in that instead of going after the NFL’s tax-exempt status, it instead targets the Washington football team’s trademark protection, retroactively canceling any current federal trademarks that use the term “r******s.”

The bill comes in the middle of a messy trademark fight between the team and a group of Native American activists. After the group successfully got the Patent and Trademark Office to successfully cancel the trademark for the team’s name and mascot, owner Dan Snyder filed a lawsuit against them. The situation is so messy that the Justice Department will intervene to “defend a key aspect” of the lawsuit.

Honda’s bill, which has 26 co-sponsors so far, as well as support from The United South and Eastern Tribes.

“Congressman Honda has taken a bold stand against racism, discrimination and the continued denigration of Native Americans by introducing this legislation, which USET strongly supports,” USET President Brian Patterson said in a statement. “If the NFL’s [Washington] franchise is unwilling to change the offensive mascot then steps should be taken, wherever possible, to eliminate public funding and trademark protections for a league that persists in offending and insulting Native peoples.”

But the bill, called “The Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act,” actually goes a step beyond canceling any of the team’s existing trademarks. It would declare their current name a disparaging term that cannot be trademarked by anyone else either.

This would prevent the sort of situation that South Park brought up in their brilliant skewering of the team. Sorry, Cartman.