(GQ)
Is Fuct free speech or is free speech Fuct? This morning the Supreme Court answered the question posed by Erik Brunetti and his skate brand Fuct, ruling 6-3 that a federal ban on registration of immoral or scandalous trademarks violates the First Amendment. Justice Kagan delivered the majority opinion, joined by Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor and Breyer filed opinions concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The immediate upside: Brunetti will now be able to obtain a federal trademark for Fuct, a protection that had been previously denied to him based on the Truman-era Lanham Act, which allowed the government to refuse registration of trademarks that consist of “scandalous” or “immoral” material. The ideologically diverse majority found common ground in ruling for Brunetti. “The government may not discriminate against speech based on the ideas or opinions it conveys,” writes Kagan, thus determining that the provision infringes on the First Amendment.
Iancu v. Brunetti inspired unusual interest in legal and political circles, even for a potentially precedent-setting free speech case. The word at the heart of the case was not allowed to be uttered in the solemn marble court during oral arguments in January, and each attempt to dance around it inspired giggles in the gallery and consternation among the justices. (In the majority opinion, Kagan writes: “the mark … is pronounced as four letters, one after the other: F-U-C-T.”) Read more