Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke from her fellow “originalists” on the Supreme Court in a decision Thursday where she objected to the majority’s use of “historical analogues” to determine that a trademark law does not violate the First Amendment.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion in Vidal v. Elster, has made searching for historical equivalents to modern laws a central focus of his analysis in recent cases dealing with the meaning of the Constitution. He most famously used that approach in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen to strike down New York’s public carry restrictions after finding that no similar laws existed at the time of the founding.