| Title | Two Unanimous SCOTUS Victories for Free Speech | |
| Date | Tuesday June 20 2017, @12:34PM | |
| Author | n1 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down two unanimous verdicts in favor of free speech. The first involved a dispute over "offensive" trademarks. Reason reports:
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in favor of the Asian-American dance-rock band The Slants, holding that the First Amendment protects the rights of the band's members to register a trademark in their band's "offensive" name.
At issue in Matal v. Tam was a federal law prohibiting the registration of any trademark that may "disparage...or bring...into contemp[t] or disrepute" any "persons, living or dead." The Patent and Trademark Office cited this provision in 2011 when it refused to register a trademark in the name of The Slants, thereby denying the band the same protections that federal law extends to countless other musical acts. Justice Samuel Alito led the Court in striking down the censorious rule. "We now hold that this provision violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment," Alito wrote. "It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend."
The Slants, a band composed of Asian performers, had sought to reclaim the slur against Asians by adopting the name themselves.
The other case involved sex offender Lester Packingham, originally convicted in 2001, who had been prosecuted for making a Facebook post in 2010 about being thankful for having a traffic ticket dismissed. A North Carolina law barred convicted sex offenders from a broad range of social media and web activities, leading Packingham to be arrested again. Again, the SCOTUS justices unanimously found the law to be an over-broad restriction of speech and overturned it 8-0.
In both cases, multiple concurring opinions were filed. The justices reached their conclusions for various legal reasons, but they all agreed that offensive speech should be protected and that even heinous acts like prior sex offenses do not deprive people of free speech.
SCOTUSblog has more detailed coverage:
Matal v. Tam: Court documents/commentary and opinion [PDF]
Packingham v. North Carolina: Court documents and analysis of the opinion [PDF]
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printed from SoylentNews, Two Unanimous SCOTUS Victories for Free Speech on 2024-05-02 19:42:32