Washington (AFP) – The Washington Redskins have asked the US Supreme Court to determine whether the American football team can trademark its name, denounced by activists as a racial slur against Native Americans.
In 2014, a tribunal at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) found that the team’s trademark should be canceled because the name is “disparaging to Native Americans.”
The cancellations only take effect, however, if the board’s decision is affirmed in court.
Although the Redskins could still use the name after losing the trademark, if they lose their case, they could also lose millions of dollars in royalty fees for the sale of merchandise bearing the name or logo.
The team asked the high court on Monday to have its case heard alongside that of the Asian-American rock group The Slants, which is trying to trademark its own name by challenging the same piece of US law.
Native American groups and supporters rejected the Redskins’ “desperate” move to use “the demeaning R-word slur.”
The NFL must “stop promoting a racial slur as the Washington team’s name,” said Oneida Indian Nation Representative Ray Halbritter, who leads the Change the Mascot campaign.
“We hope the highest court in the land stands on the right side of history and honors the spirit and letter of the Constitution by ignoring this absurdly frivolous appeal.”
In a statement, Halbritter accused the Redskins of seeking a right to “government-supported bigotry.”
“The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone such a right — not even billionaire owner Dan Snyder,” he added.
In their filing, the Redksins asked the court to hear their petition for review ahead of any ruling on an appeal pending in federal court.
The Redskins stressed that the trademark decision was made “not because the marks are disparaging today, but because the PTO believed the marks disparaged Native Americans decades ago, when the PTO registered the marks in 1967, 1974, 1978, and 1990.”
The team has been known by that name since 1933 and noted in its filing that it has since spent “tens of millions of dollars in advertising and promoting its brand.”
Many American sports teams have names that supposedly pay homage to the popular Hollywood image of American Indians as brave warriors.
Redskins, however, is defined in some dictionaries as a racial slur that goes back to the earliest days of white European settlement and the mass displacement of indigenous tribes.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.