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

The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case that may help the Washington Football team get its trademark back from the federal government—though its name has long been used as a racial slur and is offensive to many Native Americans.

In April, the team asked the court to take a case involving The Slants, an Asian-American rock band that won a case against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which initially refused to trademark the group’s name. The football team said in a filing that the band’s case, called Lee V. Tam, is an “essential and invaluable complement” to their own proceedings. It would allow the court to “consider the question presented in a wider range of circumstances, resolve intertwined, equally important questions, and avoid piecemeal review.”

Last December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington state said that banning the Oregon-based group from receiving a trademark because of its name violates the First Amendment. The judges said that a key provision of the Lanham Act, which prohibits trademark protection for offensive names, was unconstitutional.

But the federal government filed a petition to the Supreme Court to review the band’s case, which was granted yesterday.

The Washington Football Team’s trademark case is currently being reviewed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to NPR. “But a Supreme Court decision in Lee V. Tam could settle that case.”

In a petition last October, the Washington Football team appealed the trademark cancellation by pointing out a litany of other trademarks with vulgarities and slurs.