A historic Black church in D.C. that was vandalized by members of the extremist Proud Boys in 2020 has secured the group’s naming rights, allowing the institution to seek proceeds from sales of the organization’s merchandise and membership dues.
Under the ruling, from D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier, the Proud Boys International LLC must seek permission from the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church or the court to sell anything with the trademarked name, which includes its black and yellow insignia.
Bosier effectively granted the church control over the name and symbols of the far-right group. A downtown landmark steeped in civil rights work, the church never received a multimillion-dollar judgment that the Proud Boys and its leader were ordered to pay in a civil case. The case stemmed from the night that Proud Boys tore down and destroyed the church’s Black Lives Matter sign. The ruling was first reported by the New York Times.
“It is justice. It is karmic,” said the Rev. William H. Lamar IV, the church’s pastor. “It is our victory in a long line of victories,” he added, and part of “our unbroken, joyful resistance.” He said the church “will not be silent when violence is perpetrated against us,” and that “we will do everything we can to get the money. We will not stop until we are made whole.”
Kaitlin Banner, the deputy legal director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which represented the church, called it “fitting” that money from the Proud Boys “will go to fund the good works of the historic Black church.”
How much money the church will receive is unclear. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who has led the Proud Boys, said in an interview: “I wipe my a-- with the judge’s decision.” He said that the person who set up the LLC has been kicked out of the group and that the corporation has been dissolved. He declined to say if he remained chairman of the group, calling it “more of an idea” that can’t be sued.
“I fear nothing,” he said of the ruling, adding that he was in prison when the lawsuit was filed and couldn’t adequately respond. “The judge put a million-dollar settlement on a $40 sign,” Tarrio said.
A judge said that replacing the sign and taking steps to protect the church cost $36,622.76.
The Proud Boys group has a history of violence; its leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The group had marched multiple times in Washington in the lead up to the Jan. 6 attack when, authorities alleged, members of the group roamed the streets looking to fight.
This recent case stems from a night of violent protests on Dec. 12, 2020, on behalf of then-President Donald Trump, who had lost reelection. Police arrested nearly three dozen people and responded to stabbings, fights and acts of vandalism.
Black Lives Matter banners and signs were torn from two historic Black churches and destroyed. A banner belonging to Asbury United Methodist Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the city, was set on fire. Tarrio, then leader of the Proud Boys, later confessed to participating in the burning and was sentenced to five months in jail.
Though Tarrio was not in D.C. during the Capitol riot due to his arrest in the banner-burning case, he was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and obstructing a congressional proceeding by a judge who called him “the ultimate leader” of the insurrections who “was motivated by revolutionary zeal.” Trump granted clemency to Tarrio and other leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers last month, while also pardoning roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, including those who attacked police.
After Jan. 6 prosecutions affected their leadership and court records showed Tarrio was once a prolific cooperator with the FBI and local law enforcement, the group struggled to regroup at the national level. Even in the aftermath of Tarrio, the Proud Boys’ former chairman, receiving a pardon, the group has fractured, with those loyal to Tarrio remaining in “official” chapters and those distrustful of him branding themselves as “autonomous” chapters.
Still, several members returned to Washington on Inauguration Day last month, after years of largely viewing the capital as a no-go zone, chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets.”
The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church listed Tarrio among defendants in its civil suit over the vandalism of its banner and again in the lawsuit seeking control of the Proud Boys trademark. In ruling for the church in 2023, a D.C. judge described the vandalism as an “attack” that “resulted from a highly orchestrated set of events focused on the Proud Boys’s guiding principles: white supremacy and violence.”
That judge ordered the Proud Boys to pay $1 million, which was later amended to $2.8 million. With interest, attorneys said the amount has reached $3.1 million.
Attorneys for the church said the Proud Boys have paid $1,500 toward that settlement. In court filings in the trademark case, those attorneys asserted that the group has allowed its chapters across the country to recruit and market using the trademarked name “without paying a cent of royalties to [Proud Boys International]. royalties that could be used to satisfy the church’s judgment.”
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Ellie Silverman contributed to this report.