The Army's action follows a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about the religious content of the Army-licensed products. First Liberty argues, however:
once the Army creates a limited public forum via a trademark licensing regime and allows private entities such as SoS to obtain licenses, the Army cannot “discriminate against speech on the basis of its viewpoint” in the administration of the trademark licensing regime. The Army is therefore prohibited from discriminating against SoS because of its inclusion of biblical references on its products, in its advertisements, or on its website.....
More recently, in Iancu v. Brunetti the Supreme Court ... invalidated the Lanham Act’s “immoral or scandalous” clause as viewpoint discrimination.....
Clearly, if a prohibition against trademarking offensive, immoral, or scandalous speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination, then certainly the Army’s prohibition against using religious speech in conjunction with its trademark does, too. This is especially true because the Army routinely grants licenses to similar, non-religious speech.
