A second legal offensive was designed to avoid the procedural problem that doomed the Harjo case. In Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc., younger Native American plaintiffs, including Navajo Nation member Amanda Blackhorse, persuaded the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in 2014 to cancel six of the team’s trademark registrations in a 2–1 decision. The board concluded that “redskins” was disparaging to a substantial composite of Native Americans, citing the word’s historical use, the near disappearance of the term as a neutral reference to Native people after the 1960s, decades of sportswriting that paired the name with language about “scalping,” and the franchise’s own history of Native-themed costumes, imagery, and promotional materials. A federal judge affirmed the cancellation in 2015, but the ruling did not legally force the club to stop using the name; it mainly removed federal registration benefits, including government assistance in combating counterfeit merchandise. The case then became intertwined with a broader constitutional battle. In 2017, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Matal v. Tam that the Lanham Act’s disparagement clause violated the First Amendment because trademarks are private expression rather than government speech. That decision made the Redskins trademark dispute legally moot and restored the possibility of federal protection, but it did not settle the moral or cultural controversy. Native American organizations continued to call the name a slur, while mounting sponsor, investor, and public pressure during the 2020 George Floyd protests finally pushed the franchise to abandon it. The team played as the Washington Football Team in 2020 and 2021 before adopting the Washington Commanders name in February 2022.
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