Iancu v. Brunetti
The Court struck down the federal trademark law's ban on registering "immoral or scandalous" marks, ruling that it let officials favor trademarks with messages they approved of and reject ones they found offensive.
Because the law let the government pick winners and losers based on ideas expressed rather than just vulgar language, the Court found it violated the First Amendment's ban on viewpoint discrimination, extending its recent ruling striking down a similar bar on "disparaging" trademarks.
“a law disfavoring "ideas that offend" discriminates based on viewpoint, in violation of the First Amendment”
The majority's core reason for striking down the ban on registering offensive trademarks.
How it got here: The Patent and Trademark Office denied registration; Brunetti's facial challenge succeeded at the Federal Circuit, and the government asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Erik Brunetti, an artist and entrepreneur, tried to register the trademark FUCT for his clothing line, which many people read as sounding like a well-known profanity. The Patent and Trademark Office refused registration, calling the mark vulgar and offensive under a federal law barring registration of "immoral or scandalous" trademarks. Brunetti argued the denial violated his free speech rights.
The question before the Court
Could the government refuse to register a clothing brand's trademark "FUCT" just because officials found the word too vulgar or immoral?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the government could not use the "immoral or scandalous" bar to deny FUCT's registration, because the law itself favors trademarks with ideas society approves of and disfavors ideas society finds offensive. That is viewpoint discrimination, which the First Amendment forbids regardless of the setting.
The Court also rejected the government's fallback argument that it should read the law narrowly to cover only vulgar modes of expression rather than offensive ideas. The actual text reaches far beyond vulgarity to any "immoral" or "scandalous" idea, and courts cannot rewrite a law Congress wrote broadly just to save it from unconstitutionality.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Businesses and artists can now register trademarks that use vulgar, profane, or taboo language without the Patent and Trademark Office rejecting them for being offensive or immoral. The ruling also signals that Congress would need to write a much narrower, mode-of-expression-focused law if it wants to revive any limits on offensive trademarks.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the merits and leaves the Patent and Trademark Office with no statutory basis to reject "immoral or scandalous" marks, including highly vulgar or obscene ones. Congress could try to write a narrower law targeting only obscene, vulgar, or profane modes of expression, an approach several Justices suggested could survive First Amendment scrutiny, but no such law was before the Court in this case.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether a differently written, narrower law -- one limited to obscene, vulgar, or profane trademarks regardless of their message -- would be constitutional. Several Justices suggested such a law could pass First Amendment muster, but that question was not before the Court here.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Alito
Justice Alito agreed fully with the majority but wrote separately to stress that viewpoint discrimination is especially dangerous today and that the ruling does not stop Congress from writing a narrower law targeting vulgar terms that add nothing to the expression of ideas.
Dissent in part — Justice Roberts
Chief Justice Roberts agreed the word 'immoral' could not be saved, but argued 'scandalous' could be read narrowly to cover only obscene, vulgar, or profane marks. Under that reading, denying registration to such marks would not violate the First Amendment because it does not stop anyone from actually using the mark in commerce.
Dissent in part — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer argued the Court relies too rigidly on First Amendment categories and would instead ask whether a regulation causes speech-related harm disproportionate to its justification. Applying that balancing test, he concluded barring registration of highly vulgar or obscene marks causes little harm compared to the government's legitimate interests, so he would uphold a narrowed 'scandalous' bar while agreeing 'immoral' must fall.
Dissent in part — Justice Sotomayor
“The Court's decision today will beget unfortunate results.”Sotomayor's opening warning that the ruling forces registration of even the most vulgar trademarks.
Justice Sotomayor warned the ruling forces the government to register even the most vulgar and obscene trademarks with no ability to say no. She argued 'scandalous' could reasonably be read, separately from 'immoral,' to cover only obscene, vulgar, or profane modes of expression -- a viewpoint-neutral limit permissible in a government benefit program like trademark registration -- and would have upheld that narrower reading rather than striking the whole provision.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the rule from Matal v. Tam that a trademark registration bar violates the First Amendment if it discriminates based on viewpoint -- meaning it favors some opinions or messages over others rather than treating all viewpoints equally.
- Reading the words 'immoral' and 'scandalous' using their ordinary dictionary meanings, the Court found the law let the government register marks that align with widely accepted moral views while blocking marks that clash with those views.
- The Court found this facial bias played out in practice: the Patent and Trademark Office approved marks expressing socially accepted views on drugs, religion, and terrorism while rejecting marks expressing disfavored views on the very same topics.
- The Court considered the government's proposal to read the law narrowly, limiting it to marks that are vulgar or sexually explicit regardless of the ideas expressed, but concluded courts may narrow ambiguous language only when the statute is genuinely ambiguous -- and here the text plainly swept in offensive ideas, not just offensive delivery.
- Because adopting the government's narrower reading would mean rewriting the statute rather than interpreting it, the Court declined to save the law that way, leaving the viewpoint-discriminatory bar unconstitutional as written.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Matal v. Tam (582 U.S. ___)
The Court relied on Tam's rule that viewpoint-based trademark bars violate the First Amendment and applied it here.