Some three years after the Proud Boys vandalized a historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, ripping down and burning a Black Lives Matter sign following a pro-Trump rally, a judge ordered the far-right extremist group to pay the church over $2.8 million in damages for its “hateful and overtly racist conduct.”
But the Proud Boys defaulted on the judgment, and in an attempt to collect, The Washington, D.C., Metropolitan AME sued the Proud Boys for the rights to their name, the notorious organization’s single most valuable asset.
In February, D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier transferred ownership of the “Proud Boys” trademark to the church. This meant the Proud Boys could no longer call themselves the Proud Boys, maintain a website as the Proud Boys or sell Proud Boys merchandise without the church’s consent. The ruling also allowed the church to go after whatever money the Proud Boys had already made off of their brand.
Today, the Proud Boys continue to disregard the order, hawking branded hats, T-shirts, and stickers, fundraising and collecting membership dues – and Metropolitan AME is entirely disinclined to turn the other cheek.
“As a result of the Trademark Order, all use of the name by or on behalf of the chapters should cease immediately, and any money the chapters have obtained from using the name should be applied toward the Judgment the Proud Boys owe to the Church,” argues a federal trademark infringement lawsuit filed Monday in New York and obtained by The Independent.
As of August 4, the total amount due, with interest, stands at more than $3.1 million, the church’s complaint contends, and says the judgment remains “almost entirely unpaid.”
The church is now seeking an injunction to force the Proud Boys to stop using the Proud Boys name, which no longer belongs to them, to “return or destroy all existing inventory of the infringing products,” and for the organization formerly known as the Proud Boys, to turn over all funds they have received from the name’s use until the judgment has been satisfied.
Meanwhile, the complaint says, the Proud Boys’ “ongoing, willful infringement is tarnishing Metropolitan AME’s trademark and is causing significant harm to Metropolitan AME,” which created its own line of tees featuring the Proud Boys logo, but with slogans such as, “Stay Proud, Stay Black.”
“As a result of recent use, advertising, promoting, and selling T-shirts bearing the ‘Proud Boys’ mark in celebrating the Church’s victory against the Proud Boys’ attack, such mark has become uniquely associated with Metropolitan AME and its products advocating for racial justice,” the complaint states.
Roughly six weeks ago, Metropolitan AME’s lawyers served Proud Boys Hudson Valley chapter president William Pepe with a cease-and-desist letter, which the complaint says has gone completely ignored.
The 36-year-old Pepe, who was convicted of a felony and four misdemeanors for his participation in the January 6 Capitol riot but pardoned by President Donald Trump before he could be sentenced, was unable to be reached for comment. However, in a brief phone call on Tuesday, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes first railed against the media, then blithely dismissed Metropolitan AME leadership as “f***ing morons.”
McInnes insisted to The Independent that the Proud Boys are not a white supremacist gang, but rather, a “multiracial club” that welcomes Black, gay and Jewish members. He further downplayed, rather implausibly, the notion that the Proud Boys ever made significant amounts of money from merch.
Metropolitan AME officials and church attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The Metropolitan AME Church was founded in 1838. Since then, it has hosted funerals for Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks, speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and was where Barack Obama prayed on the morning of his second inauguration.
On the night of December 12, 2020, Metropolitan AME’s building on M Street was overrun by a pack of Proud Boys who scaled a fence and stormed the premises. Once inside, the Proud Boys “tore down [a] ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign from the churchyard, stomped on it and cut it into pieces, and loudly and publicly celebrated its destruction all over social media,” according to the church’s 32-page complaint. Members of the Proud Boys also vandalized a second D.C. church that same evening.
The organization, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and a terrorist entity by the Canadian government, was in town for one of several pro-Trump protests based on the outgoing president’s false claim that the previous month’s election had been stolen from him by shadowy left-wing forces.
On January 4, 2021, Metropolitan AME filed its initial suit against Proud Boys leadership over the church attack. It accused the Proud Boys of engaging” in racially motivated acts of terror and violence,” and sought a money judgment on three causes of action: bias-related conspiracy, defacement of private property, and theft.
In June 2023, the court ruled in favor of Metropolitan AME, ordering the Proud Boys to pay the church more than $1 million in damages, plus legal fees in excess of $1.8 million, for actions that it deemed “reprehensible to an extreme degree,” the complaint states.
Yet, since the Proud Boys never paid up, post-judgment interest has since brought the bill to $3,182,927.40, according to the complaint.
At the same time, the Proud Boys continue their illegal use of Metropolitan AME’s trademark, in ongoing violation of the court order, the complaint goes on. It points to, among other things, websites and domain names used by the group that feature the “Proud Boys” name, along with hats, stickers and T-shirts emblazoned with the Proud Boys name and logo, as well as a Telegram channel that “improperly makes use of the ‘Proud Boys’ trademark.”
This, the complaint alleges, is “undermining the Church’s ability and right to control and transform the goodwill signified by the famous ‘Proud Boys’ trademark from an association with white supremacy, hatred, and violence, which is diametrically opposed to the Church’s mission of love and humanity.”
In May, following Trump’s mass pardons of everyone involved in the January 6 sacking of the Capitol, the president invited former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio to his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Tarrio, who was freed in January 2021 after serving two years of a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges over his involvement in the day’s events, said Trump sat down at his table and told him, “I love you guys.”
In addition to an injunction forcing the Proud Boys to change their name, Metropolitan AME wants them to fork over their profits, times three, plus pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, as well as lawyers’ fees and punitive damages “in an amount sufficient to deter other and future similar conduct.”
