White Supremacist Proud Boys Lose Legal Right to Their Name

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Washington DC Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier granted to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal church legal rights over how the name of the far-right white supremacist group Proud Boys is used.

In December 2020, during a rally promoting the false claim that victory was stolen from Donald Trump in the previous month’s election, several Proud Boys climbed a wall and vandalized the church. In DC Superior Court, the church was awarded a $2.8 million judgement in June 2023 for this assault. Judge Neal Kravitz said the Proud Boys who attacked the church “acted with an evil, discriminatory motive based on race and that their conduct was reprehensible to an extreme degree.”

The church filed suit again last year because the Proud Boys did not pay, and  “engaged in fraudulent activity to prevent the church from collecting the judgment, including terminating the Proud Boys entity and surrendering its trademark registration.”

The group must now get the church’s permission to use its name or its symbols for revenue generation. The church can seize proceeds from sale of materials that use the group’s name or symbols.

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