I'm Elizabeth Lattery and I'm Tiffany Bates and welcome to SCOTUS 101 where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week we're talking about a Supreme Court decision in a trademark case, the 75th anniversary of the Fighting Words case, and we'll interview Ilya

Shapiro, a First Amendment expert about Howard Dean and hate speech.

So the Supreme Court issued a couple of important First Amendment decisions this week.

The first one is a case involving an Asian American band called the Slants.

So they are what they call self-described Chinatown dance rock, and they

sought a trademark of their name. But the Patent Office denied their application for a trademark,

citing a provision of federal law known as the Lanham Act that prohibits registration of

trademarks that may disparage someone. So like many other bands, the slants chose their name purposefully because it was kind of

poking fun at stereotypes about Asian Americans.

This is in line with a, you know, long tradition of bands such as the Dead Kennedys, which

is a kind of a political satire, or the Dropkick Murphy's, which is a reference to

this old sanitarium where people

will go to dry out from vendors and, you know, kind of poking fun at the stereotype that,

you know, the Irish are all drunks. So anyway, you know, the band has poked fun at at these

stereotypes with several of their albums, including slanted eyes, slanted

hearts, the yellow album, and something slanted this way comes. But most recently, their latest

album in 2017 was entitled, The Band Who Must Not Be Named. And this was because of their battle

with the government over whether they could trademark, trademark the name, the slants.

So a federal trademark, basically, it allows them to invoke federal remedies in preventing others

from selling merchandise or services with that name.

So it is a protection that they really wanted to have.

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