U.S. Supreme Court sides with funeral protesters

The U.S. Supreme Court, saying even hurtful speech is protected by the Constitution, ruled that members of a Kansas church can't be punished for staging an anti-homosexual protest at a military funeral.
The justices, voting 8-1, said a lower court was right to throw out a $5-million award to a man who said the demonstration marred his son's funeral. The protesters, from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, bore signs that said God was killing U.S. soldiers to punish the country for accepting homosexuality.
The case tested First Amendment limits, forcing the justices to choose between endorsing broad speech rights and protecting citizens from being targeted by offensive protests.
"As a nation, we have chosen ... to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing."
Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter.
After the ruling, members of the church said they would step up their picketing.
Westboro members have demonstrated at hundreds of military funerals. The church leader, Fred Phelps, was one of seven protesters at the 2006 funeral of Matthew Snyder, a Marine who died in Iraq. The protest was 1,000 feet away from the Maryland church where the funeral was held.
Albert Snyder sued Phelps and two of his daughters for intentional infliction of emotional distress. A jury awarded Snyder $10.9 million, an amount later reduced by a trial judge. A federal appeals court then threw out the entire award, and Snyder appealed to the Supreme Court.
Roberts characterized the ruling as a narrow one that rested in part on Westboro's compliance with police instructions about where the protest could be held.
Maryland has since passed a law imposing restrictions on funeral picketing, and Roberts said 43 other states and the federal government have similar measures. He said those laws were not necessarily called into question by Wednesday's ruling.
The decision, however, could bode well for a lawsuit challenging Michigan's law.
"If anyone had any doubts about whether the First Amendment protections still apply in the case of funerals, today's decision left no doubt," said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Daniel Korobkin.
Korobkin is suing Clare County, where sheriff's deputies arrested an Army veteran and his late wife in 2007 because they had protest signs in their vehicle while in a funeral procession for a soldier.
A federal judge has said that there's a "fair probability" that Michigan's law is unconstitutional.
The 2006 law prohibits anyone within 500 feet of a funeral from engaging in conduct that can disrupt or adversely affect the event.
Response to Wednesday's ruling was sharply divided. The ACLU praised it; former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin objected via Twitter.
Rick Anderson, director of Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly Township, said, "Our soldiers deserve better than that."