A lawsuit by civil rights icon Rosa Parks against Outkast over a song that uses her name has been resurrected by the appeal court in Detroit. Parks lost the original lawsuit in 1999 when a federal judge said Outkast's use of her name was protected by free speech and the duo did not need to compensate her. But an appeal court yesterday said that while the free speech defence was valid, so was Parks' claim that by using her name the duo suggested the song was about her and that she was connected to the group. The court now wants Outkast to provide an artistic reason for calling the song 'Rosa Parks'.
Parks, now 90, helped spark the civil rights movement of course when she refused to surrender her seat on a bus to a white man in 1955. She was arrested for not obeying local race laws, but the legal challenges to her arrest led to a US Supreme Court decision that forced her home town to desegregate its bus system and put an end to 'Jim Crow' laws separating blacks and whites at public facilities throughout the South.
Outkast will release a double-disc studio album 'Speakerboxx -- The Love Below' this summer via Arista.