Nine years ago this summer, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in my favor in Matal v. Tam—the case about my band's trademark that most people remember as a fight over offensive speech. It wasn't, really. The government never argued I couldn't call my band The Slants. It argued that officials, not I, got to decide what the name meant. The Court rejected that claim to interpretive authority: "Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend."
That fight didn't end in 2017. Once again, public officials are trying to restrict speech protected by the First Amendment by trying to implement vague standards of meaning.
