well aside from a right to expression a trademark is a form of legal protection, if you are giving some offensive jerks legal protection you gotta give all offensive jerks legal protection seems also to be part of the gameplan here.
Fixed no longer half assed.
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Offense it taken, not given, so no, context does not matter. But as I said, if you believe a thing which I believe to be false, we are not going to agree.
Yes, and Iâm specifically objecting to that, I think weâve gone over that a couple of times now. The function of the courts is to protect individuals and minorities from the tyranny of the majority by enforcing rule of law. The majority opinion has no bearing on whether your rights have been violated, it has no bearing on whether someone has assaulted you or stolen from you, and it has no bearing on whether a term is a slur against you.
And again, I think Iâve expressed that I think there is a distinction between the right to say what you want, and the government creating laws to protect your businessâ right to profit off of using that phrase. One is not the same as the other. You have a right to the first and no right to the second. The leap from âI can say offensive thingsâ to âThe government must grant me the right to sue people who say the same offensive thing as meâ is, I think, unsupportable via the constitution.
I definitely get that part of the argument for Washington. The question is whether the law is being fairly applied. But, like I said, we let judges figure things out. Family court cases are way more fraught than this trademark case. Different judges may rule differently on the same set of facts, but thatâs not a violation of anyone constitutional rights. I donât think they can demonstrate that the other trademarks listed are less offensive than their name. I didnât read their legal brief (87 pages) but of the ones that are shown in the quotation here, I donât think any of them comes close.
In order to argue that the law was unfairly targeting them, I think theyâd need to show a consistent pattern of the law targeting a class of things that they belong to. We know that courts sentence black men more harshly because we have lots of data. If I got a tough sentence and suspected that it was because I was of Scottish descent, no one would take me seriously unless I could show that other Scots got the same treatment. So to make a constitutional challenge, I think theyâd have to argue that there is a clear pattern of trademarks being denied to ???, or for ??? reason, and show they fit into that. Or it would have to just be so obvious on its face that there was some kind of witch hunt against them that it shocked the court they were appealing to.
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These are court documents. If thereâs any context that any word can be used, itâs in court. The name âRedskinsâ is being used objectively. If you canât use that word in court, how on earth can you argue for or against trademark protection?
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Perhaps we are talking past each other. I am referring to Coryâs use of the word throughout the article, not the documents themselves.
Quoted because people seem to keep missing this, and it bears repeating yet again just to drive it home.
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Do you think you have a better understanding of the constitution and trademark law than the ACLU attorneys?
The key part of Humbabellaâs comment is where she (or he) says âI thinkâ. Itâs an opinion. Donât be surprised that other people hold different opinions.
This place would be pretty boring if it were that homogeneous.
I think The Slantsâ case is much trickier, in that the people defending the name are in fact the same people who would theoretically be offended by it (reclaiming the term, a la Dykes on Bikes). Washingtonâs football team doesnât really have the same moral high ground. If they were identical cases, one imagines that the ACLU would also be jumping in to support Washington too.
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Oh, I am sure that legally itâs a solid challenge. Still doesnât make them asshats. 
How about this solution - the trademark office grants the trademark for Redskins to a Native American organisation.
Then they can sue the Washington Buttheads for trademark infringement.
Problem. Solved.
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Yeah - this was my first thought.
âNoooo you donât understand, weâre talking about a proud and noble peoples!â (which of course is racist itself - but in that sort of back-handed compliment way).
Then this comes along and kinda shows that theyâre essentially admitting that argument is a complete line of utter bullshit.
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The second point here really seems applicable. Of course, âethicalâ and âbusinessâ in America rarely seem to intersect.
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A friend had a pretty good counterpoint to this argument: The TAKE YO PANTIES OFF Argument | DuetsBlog ÂŽ
TAKE YO PANTIES OFF, SLUTSSEEKER, MILFSDOPORN.COM, and many others on the teamâs list would seem to fall under the more general âscandalousâ category, because the terms do not seem to target a particular person or group in the way that a mark like REDSKINS does. (Surely MILFS are not an identifiable group.) Given that the scandalous test looks to the broad opinions of general public, rather than of a particular group, it may be an easier task to register a potentially scandalous mark than a potentially disparaging mark.
So, itâs not just that Redskins is âoffensive;â itâs that itâs hateful and derogatory, and had a specific group arguing such. Now, could you argue that a few of those terms are likewise? Sure, you could, but youâd need a specific group of people arguing against it, and even so Iâm not sure thatâs a great argument. âYes, I stabbed a guy, your honor. But I know of someone just last week who stabbed a guy and was acquitted!â The law as written is pretty damned clear. Their argument suggests that some of their examples shouldnât have gotten trademark protection, not that the Redskins should.
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Yeah, they ding you on the taxes if youâre caught practicing without a license.
Uh.
So I heard.
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Well then Iâll just shut my mouth 
Of course, they could be wrong on both counts. Lawyers tend to argue lots of things that theyâre wrong about. Thatâs why judges get to decide these things.
So if a bunch of Christians found The God Delusion to be deeply offensive do you think the government would be justified in cancelling its copyright?
I pose to you the same example with copyright, heck, they could have just cancelled âThe God Delusionâ trademark to hurt sales that way, do you think that would have been acceptable?
Whatâs the point of cancelling the trademark? If you think it will inhibit their ability to use the name Redskins they you are by definition inhibiting their freedom of speech.
And the rest of us realize that spelling out a racial slur in the context of discussing said slur doesnât make us indecent people. Since your view is rather more simplistic, I can see how that might be confusing for you.
Since your view is rather more simplistic, I can see how that might be confusing for you.
Sick burn, bruh.
As a Brit, I have no opinions on the fine points of Constitutional law. ;p
But to answer your earlier point, by taking this to the courts they are asking for the courts to rule on exactly how offensive their trademark is. And we both know that the answer is not going to be the R-word isnât offensive; the least that the court will say â if they win â will be that the R-word is offensive, but that isnât a good reason to ban it. Unfortunately the judge is likely to go into some detail about how offensive the word is, whichever way the ruling goes, because how many short rulings have you read? And thatâs without considering that the question is going to be put to each and every witness and so the answer to the question is going to be in the transcripts, several times over.
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