Washington, March 03: The US Supreme Court has ruled that a small, controversial anti-gay church has the right to picket military funerals as part of the US Constitution’s free-speech guarantee.
“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and – as it did here – inflict great pain,” the justices said.
They ruled eight-to-one in favour of the Westboro Baptist Church, which had been sued by the father of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was slain in Iraq in 2006 and whose funeral was picketed by members of the Kansas-based church.
“On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” the justices said in their decision, taken after nearly five months of weighing arguments from lawyers for the Westboro Baptists and Snyder’s father.
The Supreme Court justices upheld a 2009 appellate court ruling that rejected a federal jury’s decision to award Snyder’s father Albert $US11 million ($10.88 million), later reduced to $US5 million ($4.94 million), after he sued the Westboro Baptists for defamation and violation of privacy.
The case before the Supreme Court pitted the right to privacy against the right to free speech, both protected by the US Constitution.
In October, Margie Phelps, daughter of church patriarch John Phelps, argued before the justices that Snyder’s funeral was a public media event at which protesters had shown up to debate “the sins of America and the wages of war” with those attending the ceremony.
The First Amendment protected their right to do that, she said.
Sean Summers, the lawyer representing the Snyder family, had argued that the US Constitution’s first amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech, had no role to play in the case brought by the Snyders against the Phelpses, who have disrupted many funerals of US soldiers.
First amendment advocates had warned that a ruling against the Phelpses would dangerously erode free-speech rights, but many ordinary Americans were quietly rooting for Snyder.
Members of the church – who have protested at funerals with signs reading “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God Hates You” – believe that soldiers’ deaths are God’s punishment on the United States because the country tolerates homosexuality.
——–Agencies