Native Americans protest before the Minnesota Vikings and Washington game in Minneapolis. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
The Washington Football team is yet again appealing a federal judge’s decision to uphold their trademark cancellation, asking the Supreme Court to hear its case if it chooses to take a case involving The Slants, an Asian-American rock band.
When the Oregon-based group sought a trademark for its name last December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington state said that banning offensive trademarks violates the First Amendment. And with that, the judges said that a key provision of the Lanham Act, which prohibits trademark protection for offensive names, was unconstitutional. But on April 20, the federal government filed a petition to the Supreme Court to review the band’s case.
Now, the Washington Football team says that if it takes up The Slants, the Supreme Court should “grant this petition to consider this case as an essential and invaluable complement,” according to its filing. “Granting certiorari before judgment allows the Court to consider the question presented in a wider range of circumstances, resolve intertwined, equally important questions, and avoid piecemeal review.”
In a petition last October, the team appealed the trademark cancellation by pointing out a litany of other trademarks with vulgarities and slurs.
