A major SCOTUS case found for free speech today, securing our rights.
The winning petitioners were a band known as “The Slants,” a group of Asian-Americans, who chose the name to neutralize what is often thought of as an insult.
The case of the offensive trademark is a landmark case, not because it allows the Redskins to get their trademark back or The Slants to keep their name though that is a good thing, but because it tells us what we all know — offensive speech is protected under the First Amendment.
The argument to destroy free speech
The government argued that trademarks are not private speech, but rather government speech. They claimed that a trademark represents a granting of intellectual property rights by the United States.
Government speech?
Alito’s argument put that to bed. Justice Alito asked if that means the government could refuse to recognize an author’s copyright to his book if it found his views offensive?
Alito wrote the opinion for himself, Roberts, Thomas, and Breyer. “We have said time and again that ‘the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.’”
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Alito called it “viewpoint discrimination in the broad sense.”
“Giving offense is a viewpoint”, he wrote.
Kennedy, writing for himself, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, agreed with Alito’s argument.
To see the leftists on the court agree with this decision is encouraging.
It was an issue during the Obama regime
Barack Obama pushed political correctness and controlled speech from the first days he entered office.
The Washington Redskins had their trademark taken from them illegally. The Redskins are winners now.
Sen. Harry Reid praised the U.S. District Court ruling denying future trademark protection for the Washington Redskins logo. Meanwhile other far more offensive trademarks are not banned. They’ve ignored teams with names like Redskinettes, Sassy Bitch, and The Hymies.
Barack Obama issued a challenge to a sneaker company to abandon the Redskins name. He indirectly bullied the team and anyone who used an Indian mascot.
He spoke at the White House Tribal Nations Conference in 2015 and blasted the use of Indian-themed sports mascots.
The ten-President praised Adidas for allegedly offering to work with sports teams to come up with new mascots.
Adidas announced the campaign in coordination with its participation in the White House Tribal Nations Conference.
Ninety percent of tribal leaders took no offense to Indian mascots but that didn’t matter to the control freak Barack Obama.
The former president called on Adidas specifically to work with the Washington Redskins to change their name.
He was a PC president who didn’t understand free speech. For a constitutional lawyer, that is quite amazing.
Many on the left, not only Obama, would like to decide what we are allowed to say and even think.
Recently, a young woman named Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for sending texts telling her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself. While she is a despicable person, she didn’t kill him. He killed himself. The left is criminalizing texting and free speech.
What won’t they ban? Who are they to decide what we can say?
This is part of the creeping totalitarianism in our society which travels many roads. Most insidious is political correctness.
Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total control over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.
The left appears to want to control what we eat, drink, smoke, watch, say and even think.
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