Yes, the name is a “hate crime,” and yes, he’s serious.
Via Washington Examiner:
One of Washington’s top litigators with a record of cowing Big Tobacco and Washington’s Cosmos Club has filed a petition with the FCC challenging the license of a radio station owned by the Washington Redskins, a name he dubbed “profanity,” and a “hate crime.”
John Banzhaf, a public interest law professor at George Washington University, said that the license of station WWXX-FM (ESPN 980) should not be renewed because it repeatedly uses the “ethnic slur” “Redskins,” the type of “profanity” the agency has blocked in the past.
The key opening paragraph in his petition to the Federal Communications Commission:
“Petitioner John F. Banzhaf III, a listener to station WWXX-FM, respectfully requests on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, and who are like himself adversely affected or aggrieved, that the agency deny the renewal of this station’s license and any other requests because it deliberately, repeatedly, and unnecessarily broadcasts the word ‘R*dskins’ during most of its broadcasting day, and especially in prime time where its well documented adverse impact on impressionable young Indian as well as non-Indian children is greatest, and also because, through its licensee and controlling owner Dan Snyder, also actively encourages or indeed forces many other broadcasters to likewise broadcast a derogatory racial and ethnic slur contrary to the public interest.”