Battle of the banned: the slants, an Asian American rock band, are heroes to libertarians in a battle with the U.S. government.

• Author: Alvarez, Joshua
• Position: TEN MILES SQUARE

The evening of Easter Sunday, a couple dozen people at Flying Dog Brewery, in Frederick, Maryland, were singing and shuffling along to a concert by the Slants, an all-Asian American rock band whose leader is a plaintiff in a pending Supreme Court case. A loud "No!" reverberated around the bar as the crowd joined the chorus of "From the Heart":

No, we won't remain silent, Know it's our defining moment, We sing from the heart, We sing from the heart. Those lyrics may sound generic, but the Slants have a very specific complaint. When, in 2009, the band sought to trademark its name--a tongue-in-cheek way of reclaiming and defanging the common anti-Asian slur--the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turned down the application, citing a provision of the Lanham Act of 1946 that allows the federal government to deny registration of trademarks that "disparage" any person or group. In essence, the band name, an ironic commentary on racism, was itself deemed racist.

The band sued, and the long-running case has made the Slants, a Portland, Oregon-based quartet who sound a bit like Fall Out Boy, a darling of First Amendment enthusiasts. They've gotten used to entertaining audiences like the one at the brewery, where the crowd was a mix of mostly older, conservative locals, D.C. lawyers, and Ayn Rand-thumping libertarians. (There were no Asian Americans.) While Flying Dog prides itself on in-your-face, adolescent labels (In-Heat Wheat, Doggie Style Pale Ale), the brewery is quietly tucked inside a bland corporate park, its interior decorated with industry-standard faux-rustic craft brewery fare: a long wooden bar, wooden picnic tables inside and out, Edison light bulbs. The only signs of edginess were several framed drawings by Flying Dog's official label artist, Ralph Steadman, who illustrated Hunter S. Thompson's journalism with derangement and splatter. The band was set up on a makeshift stage past one end of the bar.

Among the audience, sipping a beer and dressed in blue chino shorts and a short-sleeve button-down, was Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and author of a satirical amicus brief in support of the Slants. "Getting a trademark would really do a lot for them in terms of marketing nationally and breaking out of their Pacific Northwest audience--and this weird niche of legal nerds who know about them and want to support them," he said. (The band's lawyers argue that a trademark is crucial for getting...