Slanted freedoms and skewed voting

The Supreme Court reaffirmed core free-speech principles in two cases on Monday, decided without dissent. It also took on a major case about partisan gerrymandering.

In Matal versus Tam, the judges ruled that the government cannot pick and choose which trademarks it registers based on whether they offend certain people or groups. The case was brought by the Slants, an Asian-American dance-rock band that had chosen its name — a familiar slur against people of Asian descent — to defuse its negative power. The Patent and Trademark Office rejected the name under a provision in a 70-year-old federal law prohibiting the registration of trademarks that “disparage” any “persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols”.

Writing for the majority, Judge Samuel Alito said the law violates a “bedrock First Amendment principle: speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend”. That’s the right call.

The court also agreed to hear a case involving partisan gerrymandering, or the skewed drawing of legislative district lines to benefit one political party. The court’s decision, which would be issued in the first half of 2018, could transform US politics.

The case comes from Wisconsin, where Republicans won control of the state government in 2010, just in time to draw new maps following the census. They were extremely efficient: in 2012, Republican assembly candidates received less than half the state-wide vote and yet won 60 of 99 assembly seats. They took even more seats in 2014, while winning just a bare majority of the vote.

This distortion of the voters’ will is one of the oldest and dirtiest practices in US politics and while both major parties are guilty of it, the benefits over the past decade have flowed overwhelmingly to Republicans.

New York, June 19.