‘Basket of deplorables’ file Supreme Court brief defending offensive speech

Published December 19, 2016 5:22pm ET



The libertarian Cato Institute and “a basket of deplorable people and organizations” filed a brief with the Supreme Court defending Americans’ ability to judge offensive speech for themselves.

The brief rushes to the defense of The Slants, an Asian-American rock band locked in a legal dispute with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that denied the band a trademark for its name after deeming the name offensive. The Slants’ case is set to be argued before the Supreme Court next month, and the brief filed Friday by Cato’s Ilya Shapiro was joined by political satirist P.J. O’Rourke, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen and Flying Dog Brewery, among others. The “basket of deplorables” phrase is a reference to Hillary Clinton’s pejorative name for Donald Trump’s supporters.

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