Justices question picket practices
Photos
Jacob Phelps, a member of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, responded to the challenges of counter-protestors as he and other church members picketed outside the Supreme Court building where the Snyder-v-Phelps case was being heard Wednesday.
Photo 1 of 3
Kansas Attorney General Steve Six (left), Pennsylvania lawyer Sean Summers (center) and Albert Snyder, father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq, answer questions from reporters Wednesday following oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on a First Amendment case pitting Snyder against the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka.
Photo 2 of 3 Photo 3 of 3 TIM CARPENTER/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Westboro Baptist Church members Shirley Phelps-Roper, left, and Margie Phelps speak with reporters Wednesday after participating in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on a funeral picketing case involving the Topeka church and the family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq during 2006. Photo 3 of 3 Related Stories
WBC: Court case 'a no-brainer'
Transcript: Snyder v. Phelps
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUPREME COURT TRANSCRIPT
Read a complete transcript of the oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court Wednesday in the case of Snyder vs. Phelps.
COMMENT
SHARE By Steve Fry
Created October 6, 2010 at 11:19am
Updated October 6, 2010 at 11:50pm
WASHINGTON — Questions from U.S. Supreme Court justices came hard and fast Wednesday to attorneys representing Westboro Baptist Church and Albert Snyder, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, whose funeral church members picketed in 2006.
At times, questions to Margie Phelps, church attorney and a daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps Sr., were pointed. Phelps defended the church's right to picket at the funeral of service members. Westboro Baptist contends troops' deaths are part of God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
"This is a case about exploiting a private family's grief, and the question is: why should the First Amendment tolerate exploiting this Marine's family
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jacob Phelps, a member of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, responded to the challenges of counter-protestors as he and other church members picketed outside the Supreme Court building where the Snyder-v-Phelps case was being heard Wednesday.
Photo 1 of 3 Photo 2 of 3 TIM CARPENTER/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Kansas Attorney General Steve Six (left), Pennsylvania lawyer Sean Summers (center) and Albert Snyder, father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq, answer questions from reporters Wednesday following oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on a First Amendment case pitting Snyder against the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka. Photo 2 of 3
Photo 3 of 3 TIM CARPENTER/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Westboro Baptist Church members Shirley Phelps-Roper, left, and Margie Phelps speak with reporters Wednesday after participating in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on a funeral picketing case involving the Topeka church and the family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq during 2006. Photo 3 of 3 Related Stories
WBC: Court case 'a no-brainer'
Transcript: Snyder v. Phelps
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUPREME COURT TRANSCRIPT
Read a complete transcript of the oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court Wednesday in the case of Snyder vs. Phelps.
COMMENT
SHARE By Steve Fry
Created October 6, 2010 at 11:19am
Updated October 6, 2010 at 11:50pm
WASHINGTON — Questions from U.S. Supreme Court justices came hard and fast Wednesday to attorneys representing Westboro Baptist Church and Albert Snyder, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, whose funeral church members picketed in 2006.
At times, questions to Margie Phelps, church attorney and a daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps Sr., were pointed. Phelps defended the church's right to picket at the funeral of service members. Westboro Baptist contends troops' deaths are part of God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
"This is a case about exploiting a private family's grief, and the question is: why should the First Amendment tolerate exploiting this Marine's family when you have so many other forums for getting across your message the very same day you did?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked.
The First Amendment doesn't allow a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on speech unless the speech can be proven to be false, Phelps said.
Justice Samuel Alito painted a scenario about a grandmother who goes to a cemetery to mourn her dead grandson killed in Iraq or Afghanistan and is confronted by someone who speaks to her in "the most vile terms," including how a roadside bomb kills a victim and how happy he is the grandson was killed.
"And she's a Quaker," Justice Antonin Scalia quipped. The courtroom laughed.
Is that speech protected by the First Amendment? Chief Justice John Roberts asked Phelps.
There would have to be a "very narrow situation" where the First Amendment wouldn't protect the speaker, Phelps said. If the grandmother entered the discussion, the First Amendment protects the person confronting her, Phelps said. If the grandmother didn't enter the discussion, it doesn't, Phelps said.
Phelps denied Westboro Baptist pickets follow anyone around, adding that at the Snyder funeral there were only seven pickets and they were 1,000 feet away.
On the question of whether Matthew Snyder's family and friends were a "captive audience" when pickets protested at the funeral, Phelps said captive audience means the pickets would have to be close — "you have to be up in your grill."
Albert Snyder couldn't be a captive audience if he couldn't see the pickets or their signs, Phelps said. It is fair game for Westboro Baptist to picket a service member's funeral if a parent says he or she is proud of their dead child's military service in the war, she said. Several times she referred to Westboro Baptist as the "little church."
Sean Summers, Albert Snyder's attorney, said "the private targeted nature of the speech, in our judgment, is what makes it unprotected."
Summers acknowledged the pickets didn't violate any Maryland laws dealing with funerals.
You can have a protest within a certain distance, but that isn't to say you can have a protest within a certain distance that defames the corpse, Summers said, agreeing with Scalia.
At another point, Summers said public speech directed to a private person should be treated differently than to a public official.
"I would hope that the First Amendment wasn't enacted to allow people to disrupt and harass people at someone else's private funeral," Summers said.
News media interest in the case was high.
On Tuesday, 101 reporters filed into the courtroom to hear arguments in Snyder v. Phelps. A day earlier, 10 reporters heard another case.
After the arguments, an enormous crowd of reporters and photographers crowded around Phelps and Summers outside the Supreme Court to ask questions.
After having his case presented before the high court, Albert Snyder told reporters that picketing by Westboro Baptist "went beyond all bounds of decency and is intolerable in any civilized country."
"This is something no family should live with," Albert Snyder said. "All we wanted to do was bury Matt."
Kansas Attorney General Steve Six spoke in support of Albert Snyder to reporters.
"We feel horrible in Kansas that this church is in our state," Six said.
When a service member is praised as a hero at a funeral, Margie Phelps said, members of Westboro Baptist "will be there to tell you that God is cursing America."
Summers was optimistic the justices would rule in favor of Albert Snyder.
"The Phelpses intentionally harmed Mr. Snyder," Summers told reporters.
Each side had 30 minutes to answers questions offered by the justices. The arguments Wednesday started with the death of Matthew Snyder, 20, on March 3, 2006, when his Humvee overturned while in a convoy in a noncombat operations in Iraq's Al Anbar Province.
Fred Phelps Sr., daughters Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah A. Phelps-Davis, and four of the pastor's grandchildren picketed the funeral on March 10, 2006, in Westminster, Md. The church later posted an online "epic" about Matthew Snyder's upbringing and parents.
Albert Snyder sued the church and the three adults.
Snyder claimed his First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and assembly were violated. Westboro Baptist members claimed they were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.
A U.S. District Court jury in Baltimore found in favor of Albert Snyder on Oct. 31, 2007, awarding him $10.9 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The judge lowered the award to $5.1 million.
Westboro Baptist appealed the case, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 24, 2009, reversed the district court's verdict, saying the conduct of the Phelpses was protected by the First Amendment. A series of cases gave immunity from tort to speakers of "rhetorical hyperbole," the appeals court said.
Albert Snyder appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court isn't expected to rule on the case until next spring or summer.
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