Court won't hear Redskins case

Here is a follow-up to my post from a couple months ago regarding the court battle to get the DC area football team to change their name. The Supreme Court decided they wouldn't hear the case, and declined it without comment.

The case before the court did not directly involve whether or not the team could use the racially-offensive name; instead it involved whether the name is so racially offensive as to be undeserving of trademark protection. Lower courts had ruled that the activists who brought the lawsuit had waited too long to do so, while the activists argued that there should be no time-limit on challenging offensive trademarks.

NPR noted that "No court has ever commented on the claim that the Redskins name is racially offensive," and that this appeal "was supported by more than 30 law professors, 13 psychology professors who are experts on stereotypes and discrimination, and the Social Justice Advocacy Group, a coalition of nonprofit and religious organizations."

This does not end the legal battle, however. The lawyers who handled this case have already put forth new and younger plaintiffs, and are quoted by the AM Law Daily Blog as saying,"The Native American community is committed to a long-term fight on this issue," Mause says. "This is not something that is going to go away."

Interestingly,and perhaps boding well for the plaintiffs, is that a lower court had previously ruled that there was no time-limit to challenging offensive trademarks, and that ruling was written by Samuel A. Alito Jr.