Today a federal appellate court has struck the prohibition of disparaging trademarks as content-based regulation of free speech under the 1st Amendment - will it afford the same protection to attorney criticism of judicial misconduct?

Today, a federal appellate court has made further progress into its general trend of outlawing content-based regulation of speech by the government on 1st Amendment grounds.

In a case In Re Tam, the D.C. Circuit court has struck today government's prohibition of "disparaging" trademarks.

Once again, that is commercial speech, and even commercial speech gets protection from federal courts under the 1st Amendment when it gets discriminated against and prohibited by the government based on its content.

That is the second case this year alone striking content-based government regulation of speech, see also Reed v Town of Gilbert decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18, 2015.

I can only hope that the U.S. Supreme Court takes a similar view to protect me and people like me, whose law licenses were suspended or revoked because we did our duty by our clients and because we were making motions to recuse on their behalf or were criticizing judicial misconduct outside of court proceedings.

After all, speech on the subject of misconduct of public officials should be even more protected than mere commercial speech.

We will wait and see whether it is so.