PeteP: Just as your right to wave your fist ends at my nose, the Phelp’s right to protest as ‘free speech’ ends when it crosses over into violating the right of the Snyders to bury their dead in peace and with respect.

As Snyder himself admitted, he had not known of the protest until he saw a video of it.

The Supreme Court should throw it out on the basis that he could not prove damages.

IR Student: You take the position that the First Amendment should allow Phelps to protest the funeral but would agree (I presume) that the UCI student speech is not protected speech under the first amendment

Did the protestors actually disrupt the speech, or was their presence unnoticed by the speaker until he saw a video of the protest?

In a younger and more vigorous era, the Phelps crowd would have been horsewhipped out of town, or worse.

There is a crisis of legitimacy that the entire government is struggling with. The more the courts split hairs in cases that are easy for Joe Bloggs to understand, the more they risk getting tarred with the same brush.

This conduct must be countenanced because Phelps had a “political” message to get out, and while this was surely not the only way for him to do so, this was a highly effective way for him to accomplish that purpose, leveraging as it did the intended outrage to get him and his message a great deal of free publicity? It matters that Phelps probably couldn’t get as much publicity, let alone for free, otherwise? To allow the Snyders to recover for IIED would impermissibly infringe on Phelps’ First Amendment rights? The Snyders had no rights of their own to be protected, like one to be spared gratuitous harassment over something not of their doing (America’s supposed tolerance of homosexuality); or, did they have rights, but those rights had to give way to Phelps’ right to speak his mind whenever, wherever, and under whatever circumstances he chose to do so?

I don’t see it as a circumscription of the First Amendment to allow a recovery for IIED given facts like the ones in this case. Phelps would not be denied the right to express his odious opinions, he would just being denied an unfettered “right” to go about it in a way that doesn’t incidentally victimize the Snyders, but does so intentionally, inflicting emotional distress on them so he Phelps can draw attention at their expense. If the Supremes allow the trial court’s award of damages to the Snyders, they won’t cause me to fear for freedom of speech in this country.

The “Phelpsians,” as you call them, are more than a mere “God hates fags” group. They go by the name of the “Westboro Baptist Church” and it is their belief that the death of every American service member is the almighty’s punishment of America for allowing gays in the military. They attempt to proclaim this belief at every military funeral.

In its simplest terms, the question to be decided is whether standing outside a cemetery, with a bullhorn, proclaiming, in a loud clear voice, “Ha, ha! Your kid is dead because America has gays in the military,” rises to the level of protected speech. Hopefully, in making that determination, the Court is cognizant of the fact that there are quite a few people who have expressed a willingness to do violence to Fred Phelps, and his minions. Arguably, the rantings of the Westboro Baptist Church members does not border on “fighting words” they define the term.

Just my opinion.

How does Phelps-led protests differ from the UC-Irvine student “protest” of Michael Oren speaking at their campus? You take the position that the First Amendment should allow Phelps to protest the funeral but would agree (I presume) that the UCI student speech is not protected speech under the first amendment. The conduct by both protesters seems pretty similar to me (i.e. they both aim to disrupt the proper functioning of an event), though to be fair I haven’t thought it through that hard. I’d be curious to hear how you differentiate the two cases.

(On another, but related, note, is there any sort of content that funeral picketing speech might have that wouldn’t cause emotional distress?)

Talk ‘the law’ all you want – the SC needs to overturn the 4th, and re-instate the verdict against them.

Free speech has it limits, as do all things. Yelling fire in a theater is one. What they do to the bereaved at the funerals of ANYONE, regardlesss who or why, is not and should not be ‘protected speech’ either.

Let them hold their protest elsewhere, at another place and time, fine. They should not be allowed to disrupt funeral services or burials. The bereaved have rights, too.