October 6, 2010 5:52 PM

Antigay Funeral Protesters Hit the Supreme Court

Posted by Zach Lowe

You want to get your friends interested in the law and the U.S. Supreme Court? Today is the day, because outside of a rehearing of Roe v. Wade, you probably won't get a more mainstream-audience-friendly case than that of the father suing the antigay church protestors who picketed his son's funeral. The protesters, all affiliated with a tiny family-run church in Kansas, claim U.S. military casualties come as God's vengeance for America's failure to condemn homosexuality and other sins. They attend the funerals of soldiers, including that of Matthew Snyder, and bring signs blaring messages such as "God Hates the USA" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."

Snyder's father, Albert, sued the church, claiming demonstrators intentionally inflicted emotional distress when they picketed his son's funeral in Maryland in 2006. A lower court awarded Snyder $5 million in damages, but a federal appeals court reversed that ruling, leading to today's hearing at the high court. 

And what a hearing it was, according to rundowns in The Wall Street Journal and by our own Tony Mauro at the National Law Journal. The church, represented by the daughter of its pastor, repeated its argument that the First Amendment protects its right to protest. Snyder's side has argued the First Amendment does not give someone the right to essentially crash a funeral in order to promote a political agenda. 

The justices appeared truly torn, according to Mauro and the WSJ. The argument touched on several issues, including:

• The question of whether the Snyders could file a tort claim even if the church could show it followed all local and state laws in setting up their protest. Evidence shows they stayed at least 1,000 feet from the funeral and obeyed other law enforcement requests. Snyder's father did not realize the protest had taken place until he got home and saw a television news report about it. 

• The question of whether Snyder's father transformed himself into a public figure--with a reduced expectation of privacy--by giving interviews to several newspapers about his son's death and the Iraq war in general. "When is this senseless war going to end?" he asked the Baltimore Sun. Margie Phelps, the lawyer for the church and daughter of pastor Fred Phelps, argued Albert Snyder thrust himself into the public debate about the war and made his son's funeral fair game for public protest, the NLJ says. The justices wondered about that. Justice Alito asked whether Snyder would have become a public figure in the church's view had he given reporters boilerplate quotes about his son's death.

• Whether Internet postings through which the church specifically targeted Snyder's son, often in nasty ways, factor into the case at all. This issue seemed to give the justices pause, the WSJ reports. 

There's lots to think about here, obviously. Go read Mauro's typically thoughtful account for more. 

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