A band that excites anti-racism advocates, football executives and libertarians lawyers – in addition to actual fans – is heading the Supreme Court for oral arguments Wednesday on whether the government can refuse to register "disparaging" trademarks.

The Slants, an Asian-American band formed in Oregon in 2006, is challenging a section of law it says allows for improper subjective analysis that blocked their band name but allowed White Trash Cowboys and N.W.A., which stands for Niggaz Wit Attitudes.

The case rarely is mentioned without reference to the ongoing trademark dispute involving the Washington Redskins football team, which is facing the loss of some registrations after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014 found the name disparages American Indians.

On advice of its legal team, The Slants canceled a planned protest performance on the steps of the Supreme Court, though they did play a couple songs there on Monday, a federal holiday during which the court was not in session.

Simon Tam, the 35-year-old band founder and its last remaining original member, spoke with U.S. News ahead of the hearing. Tam opposes continued use of the Redskins name and says the team hasn't bankrolled his fight.

And Tam argues a victory on First Amendment grounds is likely to benefit historically marginalized groups moreso than wealthy slur-users.

USN: What did you hope to communicate by naming your band The Slants?

Tam: Really, we wanted to talk about our slant on life, our perspective of what it’s like to be Asian-American in this country. We come from different ethnic backgrounds, different parts of the country, yet we all experience the same types of stereotypes and racism. So we wanted a musical project that could express some of these experiences and articulate them in a way other people could empathize with so we could move to a better society.

USN: Can you explain your opposition to the name of the Washington Redskins?

Tam: There’s been a substantial amount of Native Americans who have expressed deep concerns over their name, and unlike "slants" or other words, redskin has always been known as a racial slur, that's what people associate with it.

And it doesn’t end with their particular team. I don’t think people should be used as mascots, especially people denigrated and marginalized by the government for centuries.

USN: Do you hope the Supreme Court rules narrowly in a way that would disadvantage the Redskins?

I would hope the justices can rule on what’s best for the country. ... But generally speaking, I believe if we rule narrowly and we keep Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act constitutional, then it affects much more than a single football team. Because Section 2(a) [which bans "disparaging" names] has been used primarily against communities of color and against members of the LGBTQ community. ...

For example, look at Dykes on Bikes, the San Francisco motorcycle group [which filed a brief supporting The Slants] … they have been fighting their case longer than we have. And even after the trademark office granted them their first trademark, when they applied to get their logo the trademark office said, no, dykes is offensive to lesbians. ...

When you have such inconsistencies, the people who experience the most burden are those with the fewest resources. ... We shouldn’t be writing our laws around one well-resourced football team, we should be writing our laws around giving the most options to the people with the fewest resources like small-business men, nonprofits and artists such as myself, and especially marginalized groups who practice re-appropriation or reclaiming of stigmatizing labels or stereotypes.

USN: Would you be OK with trademark registration for a Jewish group called the Big Noses or a group called the Greasy Italians?

This case isn’t the floodgate for hate speech. As the government says itself, people can still use these terms whether or not they have a trademark registration. So if the goal is to end or curtail hate speech, that’s not happening. ... People are going to use these offensive terms anyway.

At the same time, those same groups you mention could be members of those communities themselves, trying to use wit and irony to neuter malice. They could be using satire to communicate an important political message, and if you strip those tools away from those communities you’re losing out on a valuable discussion we need to have about racism and stereotypes.

Morally, I might be like, "OK, I might not find that agreeable," but from a bigger perspective I can't speculate on every trademark registration to be, that wouldn't make sense, especially if I'm not a member of those groups. I can’t comment on whether Italian-Americans would find that offensive, or Jewish Americans.

One of the famous [trademark registration] cases involved Heeb Media. Heeb is traditionally known as a disparaging term for Jewish Americans, yet they have a very established magazine and the trademark office granted them a trademark for it. But when they applied with the exact same word for clothing they were denied on the basis it was offensive to Jewish Americans.

USN: After the appeals court ruling in your favor, you said journalists were getting things wrong about the case. What are the big things people get wrong?

They get basic facts about the case wrong. Even the government gets that wrong. If you read the federal brief [filed last year by the U.S. solicitor general], it says that I'm the lead singer. But I've never been the lead singer and I never will be. Fifteen attorneys signed off on that thing, and I'm thinking, why didn't a single one of them just Google it? Why didn't they double-check to see if the fact was correct? And sometimes they even misspelled my name. It’s ridiculous. If you’re going to be denying someone’s rights, you better get everything right. But they don’t want to examine it too closely, because if they did they would find the overwhelming number of Asian-American groups are in support. ...

There’s over 800 registered trademarks for the term slant. I’m actually the only person in all of U.S. history to be denied registration for the word slant on the premise of it being racist toward Asians. And ironically other parts of the government are constantly asking me and my band to work with them on anti-racism issues.

USN: Have the Redskins financed your lawsuit?

I wish there was money coming to us because I'm sick of paying these court fees. But, no, of course not.

I’ve never spoken to [Redskins owner] Dan Snyder. ... [And] to me that sounds like a pretty extreme conspiracy theory, that 12 years ago he would fathom this idea having this Asian-American dance rock band that specializes in anti-racism, calling it 'The Slants' and then going through a legal journey of eight years and designing every single step of the way so it would lead to a free speech argument rather than a procedural and evidentiary argument.

It’d be like saying maybe Barack Obama designed this whole thing so it would reflect on the Trump presidency when the decision was announced.

USN: How would you describe your fan base?

We have an incredibly eclectic and diverse fan base. They range from Asian-Americans of all ages, from toddlers to people well into their 90s. We have great support from internment camp survivors from World War II because we perform for many of those groups. We play at a lot of anime conventions, so we get our support from what we call our geek army, people who like to dress up in costumes and look like they belong in cartoons or video games. … And of course our music resonates the tail end of millennials because we play '80s-influenced music and they like that retro throwback sound. ...

People who listen to [NPR Supreme Court reporter] Nina Totenberg or people who are Wall Street Journal junkies don’t necessarily like to go to rock clubs. So we still have our core fan base who have been following us for years.

USN: This saga began when other bands named The Slants were confusing fans, correct? What happened to the other bands?

There were two bands in Arizona and one band in Colorado. And I think they’re defunct now. It’s kind of hard to tell, because when you Google ‘The Slants’ now it’s almost always our band. The last I saw any of those bands being active was a couple years ago. …

When I first started back in 2007, one of the groups, in Colorado, it was like a group of high schoolers and I said, ‘We are an established band and we’re using the name,’ and at first they said OK and changed their name for a few months, and then they changed it back to the Slants and tried to make it stand out by capitalizing the letter N and the Ss and thinking that was good enough to be different. But of course changing the capitalization of your letters doesn't distinguish your products in the marketplace. If you have the exact same words, it's not going to help fans who are trying to distinguish buying music or tickets from one band or the other.

None of them were Asian-American. I can’t recall any of them being malicious toward Asian-Americans. I think for a lot of people “slant” is what it is, it’s a neutral term, it’s not a racial slur. They think it’s a cool, edgy name. And in the musical sense, slant is a type of guitar chord, so musicians get it.

USN: What’s your favorite song by The Slants, and why?

We have a song called "Sakura, Sakura" that's a good representation of what we do. It’s a play off the old schoolyard rhyme people used to sing to us – saying "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees: look at these!" – and pull back their eyes back. Really offensive stuff. We took that and used it as a mantra of empowerment for our community.