Summary
Simon Tam, the founder and bassist of the band The Slants, filed a trademark request for the band’s name. But the U.S. Trademark Office denied the request and cited the Disparagement Clause of the Lanham Act of 1946, which prohibited certain trademarks that could be considered offensive or disparaging.
Tam appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and a panel of the appellate court upheld it. But after the court reviewed the case en banc, it ruled that the Disparagement Clause violated the First Amendment and that the trademark office should have granted Tam’s request.
The government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Alliance Defending Freedom filed an amicus brief detailing the dangers of censoring speech simply because some may find it contemptuous or disparaging. In June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the Disparagement Clause violated the First Amendment because “speech may not be banned on the grounds that it expresses ideas that offend.”