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Supreme Court To Consider Military Funeral Protest Case
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday to get involved in the legal battle over anti-gay protesters who show up at military funerals with signs bearing inflammatory messages.
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Westboro Baptist Church protesters (file photo)
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12 Comments 
WASHINGTON (March 8, 2010)--The U.S. Supreme Court is getting involved in the legal fight over the anti-gay protesters who show up at military funerals with signs bearing such inflammatory messages as "Thank God for dead soldiers."
The court agreed Monday to consider whether the First Amendment protects the protesters’ message, no matter how provocative and upsetting it may be.
Members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., have picketed military funerals here and around the country in an effort to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.
The justices will hear an appeal from the father of a Marine who was killed in Iraq to reinstate a $5 million verdict against the protesters, after they picketed outside his son's funeral in Maryland.
In September the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the $5 million verdict, ruling that the protesters’ signs displayed "imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric" protected by the First Amendment.
A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy over the protest at the funeral for his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, 20, in 2006.
Snyder died March 3, 2006 from injuries from a non combat-related vehicle accident in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
He was assigned to Combat Service Support Group-1, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Latest Comments
I have just one more comment: IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THEIR RIGHT TO PROTEST STOPS WHEN THEY BECOME CONFRONTATIONAL. The courts have repeatedly stated that free speech does not cover inciting riotious behavior speech. Therefore, since the signs were shown at the funeral of a soldier, it seems that it is inciting speech since a soldiers family was present and mourning (if it had been my son, the riot would have been immediately commenced). Speech intended and designed to cause damage and ill feeling was displayed. Ill feeling is the first step to violence and therefore is an incitement to riot. So, the speech was outside of the 1st Amendment bounds. Just as yelling or posting speech advocating racial riots, arsons, or treason would be. Simple as that.....
I am a member of the Patriot Guard and have seen these clowns show up to protest. They get a "deer in the headlights" look when we are in a flag line just standing there quietly and peacefully. They want to cross the flag line, but don't have the guts to try it. Like most protestors, they DEMAND the rights of free speech, but are not willing to put thier bodies in the line of fire to garruntee that freedom. The Patriot Guards have already put their lives on the line, in some cases many times, and we will continue to do so. It just shows what these "protestors" really are....nothing, nobody, and a monumental worthless waste of perfectly good air. I pity them. If they were as "righteous" as they claim, they could walk on water....and so far, I have yet to see one perform a minor miricle, much less walk on water.
This church has a long and ugly history of protesting various events in the U.S.A. and Canada. Their protests are geared toward anything they think is wrong in the eyes of God. Their number include children who spout the same hatred as the adults; do these kids really understand what they are being told to preach. I would like to see and hear anything positive from this church. But in the maintime, why doesn't the IRS look carefully at the tax standing of this very political church. I appears they do more to denigrate our country than any good for God.
