Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-302_e29g.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

members  of  any  group.”    Id.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  22).  The 
bar thus violated the “bedrock First Amendment principle”
that  the  government  cannot  discriminate  against  “ideas 
that  offend.”  Id.,  at  ___–___  (slip  op.,  at  1–2).    Slightly
different  explanations,  then,  but  a  shared  conclusion: 
Viewpoint discrimination doomed the disparagement bar. 
If  the  “immoral  or  scandalous”  bar  similarly  discrimi-
nates  on  the  basis  of  viewpoint,  it  must  also  collide  with 
our First Amendment doctrine.  The Government does not 
argue  otherwise.  In  briefs  and  oral  argument,  the  Gov-
ernment  offers  a  theory  for  upholding  the  bar  if  it  is
viewpoint-neutral (essentially, that the bar would then be
a  reasonable  condition  on  a  government  benefit).  See 
Brief  for  Petitioner  14–26.    But  the  Government  agrees
that under Tam it may not “deny registration based on the 
views expressed” by a mark.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 24.  “As the 
Court’s  Tam  decision  establishes,”  the  Government  says,
“the  criteria  for  federal  trademark  registration”  must  be 
“viewpoint-neutral to survive Free Speech Clause review.” 
Pet.  for  Cert.  19.  So  the  key  question  becomes:  Is  the 
“immoral  or  scandalous”  criterion  in  the  Lanham  Act 
viewpoint-neutral or viewpoint-based?

It  is  viewpoint-based.  The  meanings  of  “immoral”  and
“scandalous”  are  not  mysterious,  but  resort  to  some  dic-
tionaries  still  helps  to  lay  bare  the  problem.   When  is 
expressive  material  “immoral”?  According  to  a  standard 
definition,  when  it  is  “inconsistent  with  rectitude,  purity,
or  good  morals”;  “wicked”;  or  “vicious.”  Webster’s  New 
International  Dictionary  1246  (2d  ed.  1949).  Or  again, 
when  it  is  “opposed  to  or  violating  morality”;  or  “morally
evil.”  Shorter  Oxford  English  Dictionary  961  (3d  ed. 
1947).  So  the  Lanham  Act  permits  registration  of  marks
that  champion  society’s  sense  of  rectitude  and  morality,
but not marks that denigrate those concepts.  And when is 
such  material  “scandalous”?    Says  a  typical  definition, 
when  it  “giv[es]  offense  to  the  conscience  or  moral  feel-