THE SLANTS

In 2017, a dance-rock band from Portland ended up in front of the Supreme Court of the United States — and won, unanimously. This is our side of that story.

The Name That Started It All

When Simon Tam formed The Slants in 2006, the name was meant to do exactly what it did: take a word that had been used against Asian Americans and turn it into something we owned. It was a statement of pride, not an insult — and our fans, especially the Asian American community that rallied around us, understood that immediately.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office didn't. In 2010 and 2011, our application to trademark our own band name was denied under a provision of federal law called the disparagement clause, which allowed the government to refuse trademark registration to anything it considered offensive. An examining attorney decided our name was disparaging to people of Asian descent — without ever asking the Asian American community what it thought.

Why We Fought

We weren't trying to start a legal crusade. We just wanted to protect our own name, the way any band does. But the more we pushed back, the clearer it became that this wasn't only about us. The disparagement clause had been used inconsistently for decades — it was the same law standing between other artists, businesses, and communities and the right to define themselves on their own terms.

So what started as a trademark filing turned into a fight over a bigger question: does the government get to decide which words are too offensive for a private citizen to use to describe themselves? Who gets to define how we identify ourselves?

The Journey to the Supreme Court

We appealed. We lost, then we appealed again. The case worked its way up through the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and the Federal Circuit before the Supreme Court agreed to hear it — under the caption Matal v. Tam, named for Simon as the named party.

Oral arguments were held in January 2017. On June 19, 2017, the Court issued its decision: unanimous. All eight participating justices agreed that the disparagement clause violated the First Amendment. The government, the Court held, cannot refuse a trademark simply because it finds the message offensive — that's exactly the kind of viewpoint-based censorship the First Amendment exists to prevent.

What the Ruling Means

Matal v. Tam didn't just get our name registered. It struck down a law that had been used to deny trademarks across the board, and it stands today as one of the clearest modern statements that the government doesn't get to police whether private speech is "offensive" enough to lose legal protection. The decision continues to be cited in First Amendment cases well beyond trademark law, and it's taught in law schools as a landmark case on government speech regulation.

For us, it also meant something simpler and more personal: the name we chose to reclaim a word for our community was, legally, ours.

Beyond the Courtroom

None of this happened without cost. The years of litigation were expensive. The case took a toll on the band in ways that never made the headlines. But it also brought an entire community together around a fight bigger than one band's name, and that part of the story matters as much to us as the ruling itself.

Want the Full Legal Record?

This page tells the story from our side of it — the band's. For the definitive legal history, court record, and scholarly analysis of the case, including Simon's law review article on how Matal v. Tam actually became a First Amendment case, visit simontam.org.

You can also read more about how the case shaped who we are on our FAQ page and see how the story has been preserved in museums across the country.