It is scheduled to issue the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the battle very serious about freedom of speech on Wednesday in the appeal filed by the father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq who claims his son’s funeral in 2006, has been disrupted and destroyed by the protest antigay.
Albert Snyder won the verdict of the jury of $ 5 million against the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church for baptized of emotional distress and violation of the sanctity of the funeral of his son, Corporal Matthew Snyder.
But reflected in the later ruling by the Appellate Committee of the Federal Court ruled that despite the offensive nature of the protests held by the members of Westboro, its activities were protected by the First Amendment.
Mr. Phelps is known at the national level of the opposition of fire and brimstone, to his homosexuality. Since 2005, he organized and the members of the Church of Topeka, Kansas-based protests at military funerals of service members who are not gay in an attempt to attract public attention to their cause.
The Panel believes that God hates homosexuality and to punish the United States to accept the growing gay rights by killing U.S. troops abroad.
Ups and family members and others in military funerals around the protests. But Phelps and his supporters insist that they have the constitutional right to carry their message to people at funerals.
“Snyder was one (only one) chance to bury his son and maimed on that occasion forever,” wrote Mr. Snyder’s lawyer, Sean Summers, of York, Pennsylvania, in his petition urged the Supreme Court to address this issue. “Snyder deserves the best. When is the best. Deserve better civilized society.”
The Court of Appeal that the jury contrary provision does not disagree with this point. But he said the Court of Appeal, despite the “repulsive and repugnant nature of the contested words”, and Phelps was the First Amendment right to speak on public issues, even when the speech was an attack too.
Panel, citing the Court of Appeal fellow judge: “Judges must defend the Constitution in some cases, share a pit [of] with scoundrels of every kind, but to abandon this position because of bad company is selling cheaply freedom.”
View, saying: “It is a fair summary of history to say that often guarantees of liberty was forged in controversies involving the people are not very nice.”
A lawyer for Phelps, his daughter, Margie Phelps of Topeka, that, contrary to the claims of the opposition lawyer, Westboro protesters did not disrupt the funeral.
She said the seven strikers and stood in a particular place by the priest, the police, and more than a thousand feet of the funeral. She said “I want to go to hell”, and this demonstration were not visible and audible to those who attended the funeral: they sang songs and waved signs that included messages “Thank God for dead soldiers.”
“I did not notice that one of them going to the funeral, including [Mr. Snyder],” Ms. Phillips writes. Snyder “did not hear them, as well, had disappeared when he left the church.”
Margie Phelps says that Snyder paid objections to the protest by the news footage that looks after this event and considered written material on the Internet after a month of service.
The lawyer said the case Westboro Snyder protect freedom of expression violates the First Amendment because they were church members participate in public discourse, which has not been proven false.
“Constitution is the risk if it can use the objective case of anger in a speech to punish the silence that does not make false statements of fact, uttered in public areas on public issues,” writes Margie Phelps.
In the application of the Supreme Court to overturn a decision of the Court of Appeal, Attorney Snyder says the Supreme Court did not grant absolute protection to the type of talk on this issue in this case.
Mr. Summers says his client is one of individuals who did not do anything for himself as part of a public event or controversy. “There is no reason for the Court to extend absolute protection to expressive conduct that intentionally harms the individual,” he says.
“Mr. Snyder has a significant interest in privacy to attend the funeral of his son without the intervention of unwanted,” he writes. “This has caused the behavior Phelpses’ during the funeral of Matthew Snyder Mr. Snyder serious psychological and physical hardship and hindered the process his grief.”
He adds in the summer and short: “We must end the freedom and Phelpses’ expression where it is inconsistent with the freedom of Mr. Snyder for the funeral of his son, who was meant to be officially a religious gathering.”
