NATIONAL NEWS – White supremacist group Proud Boys lose trademark to members of black church

Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer 

Ownership of the Proud Boys’ trademark has been given to the black church that the group vandalized in 2020. The church is the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. The church was granted ownership of the trademark on Monday after Judge Tanya M. Jones Boiser of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia ruled. The decision also gave the church a lien on the trademark and the power to block Proud Boys from using the trademark to sell licensed goods such as t-shirts and hats without the approval of the church. 

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio referred to a statement that he posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) in which he said that the judge should be impeached and the church’s status as a non-profit should be revoked. Tarrio had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy because of his role in the 2020 capitol riots that happened on January 6th before being pardoned by President Trump. The ruling on the Proud Boys’ copyright stemmed from an incident In early December 2020 in which members of the right-wing group attended a “Stop the Steal” event in Washington D.C. and attacked the church by climbing over a fence and then destroying “Black Lives Matter” signs. A court ordered the Proud Boys to pay $2.8 million, but the group failed to pay the church.