But, from what I understand about the facts in the case, I think Westboro Baptist was within their 1st Amendment rights regarding the Snyder funeral protest.
They weren't blocking access to mourners or trespassing on private property. From what I have read Mr. Snyder didn't even see or hear the actual protest, he saw video about it after the fact.
Phelps daughter, who argued the case, may be a horrid piece of filth, but when she discussed the issues she seemed to have her shit straight. I was frankly surprised at how unstupid she sounded in an interview.
The only factor I am not sure about is the apparent specific targeting of Mr. Snyder on their website and whether he can be considered a public figure....but as they opened their case with "We are talking about a funeral" they are going a different way.
do you have a link for this? I would like to check it out.
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Background info for you to start searching whatever aspect you find most interesting: Westboro Baptist is headed by Fred Phelps. I think all but a few of its members are Phelps family members as well. They maintain the website GodHatesFags.com, and protest funerals of soldiers and gays holding up signs like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", "God Hates the USA", photos of dead people overlaid with flames, etc, and they celebrate disasters such as hurricanes and floods as God's righteous anger at the US being so incredibly pro-gay*.
I don't know from the law, but in a more general "should they prevented from doing this" sense, I lean towards the WBC people's actions being free speech that ought to be tolerated. They have a right to protest whatever they want, no matter how asinine or hateful. I favor a pretty maximal concept of free speech, though.
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wow, that is about crazy, I will check it out thanks
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While I don't see any point in protesting a funeral besides being complete asses or antagonizing those at the funeral I'm also heavily against setting exceptions to free speech for worry that those exceptions might creep over time.
Westboro should be investigated for their abuse claims not because they are inconvenient and disagreed with.
Here you'll find tons of information on Snyder v. Phelps, including a link to the transcript of yesterday's oral argument in the Supreme Court. Some prior FF stuff is available here.
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Whenever I'm tempted to support some efforts to silence them by legal means I just remind myself that the public was far less interested in doing anything about them so long as they were only picketing the funerals of dead homosexuals. It wasn't until they went after soldiers that the public began to look for a means of silencing them.
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Okay I read the oral arguments and a couple of Lyle Denniston's posts, and I'm looking forward to reading the Court's opinion. If the "protestors" were really 1000 ft. away, not yelling and left the grounds several minutes after the ceremony began, the complaint seems less grounded to me. Whatever the decision I'm sure the opinions will be interesting, and in any case I do love that a group that hates America for its depravity and hypocrisy is forced to cite Hustler v. Falwell to defend itself.
I, too, wouldn't feel comfortable with free speech being limited by the government. It's right where it needs to be now.
However, how about a Constitutional amendment that allows private citizens to open a can of whoop ass on Objective Douches? They're still free to harass, they just also have the freedom to get the shit kicked out of them.
Yeah, I'm kidding. Mostly. But damn, would it feel good.
Given my history as a SCUM-SUCKING TRIAL LAWYER, I oppose any and all efforts to use the U.S. Constitution or any state constitution as an instrument of toart refoarm!
On the merits, it seems to me that the court of appeal got one key aspect of its decision absolutely right and the other absolutely wrong. The trial judge gave a long, rambling instruction on First Amendment law to the jury. The appellate court was pretty clearly right in ruling that the judge required the jury to make First Amendment determinations that the court was obliged to make as a matter of law.
The usual remedy when the trial court fucks up the jury instructions is a new trial. The absolutely-wrong component of the court of appeals' decision is their holding that Phelps & Co. were entitled to First Amendment lawsuit immunity as a matter of law because their their statements didn't contain demonstrably false statements of fact as opposed to rhetorical hyperbole.
The distinction the court of appeals made here just plain doesn't exist in this context, and imposing it on these facts is bad policy. First of all, the speech at issue is "religious" in nature. Do we really want judges determining what qualifies as a statement of fact instead of plain ol' overheated rhetoric in the religious speech context? Surely a lot of those Westboro Baptist assholes believed that everything on those signs was factual. I have no desire to see judges patting loathsome cumbubbles such as these on the heads and saying, "There, there; you didn't really mean that" as a vehicle for protecting them from accountability.
As vm pointed out, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell is the main Supreme Court case. That's the one where Hustler published a liquor ad parody in which Jerry Falwell described fucking his momma in an outhouse. Falwell sued and got a money judgment based on the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress -- one of the same torts at issue in Snyder -- that the Supreme Court reversed on First Amendment grounds. The Court held that "public figures and public officials may not recover for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of publications such as the one here at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with 'actual malice,' i. e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true." That rule was imported from prior cases involving First Amendment limits on state law defamation claims.
The key to Falwell, it seems to me, is the phrase "publications such as the one at issue here." Imposing an actual falsity requirement makes a certain amount of sense in the parody/satire context, where the complaint will more often than not be something like, "They told a highly disturbing lie about me." However, there's nothing in Falwell that requires or suggests a "false statement of fact" requirement for IIED claims generally. After all, falsity isn't an element of that particular tort. Incredibly, Snyder's lawyers didn't mention any of this in his cert petition.
And then there's the whole public v. private issue. Even if Falwell applied, First Amendment protection attaches only to speech about public officials, public figures, or matters of public concern. You don't get to do what Phelps & Co. did here, namely drag a family into the street kicking and screaming, shine a spotlight on them, and then claim they're public figures.
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Originally Posted by viscousmemories
If the "protestors" were really 1000 ft. away, not yelling and left the grounds several minutes after the ceremony began, the complaint seems less grounded to me.
This is what frosts my ass about this whole mess. Truth be told, Snyder's case wasn't worth a rat's ass for a reason totally unrelated to the First Amendment: he didn't present sufficient evidence to justify submitting any of his claims to a jury as a matter of state tort law. The concurring judge in the court of appeals did a very good job explaining why.
Thing is, Phelps didn't make that argument on appeal and thereby waived it. The only way he can make a big splash here is with a constitutional issue. No way in hell this case gets to the Supreme Court if Phelps had won in the court of appeals on a garden variety state law sufficiency-of-evidence issue.
Phelps is grandstanding, and so far it's working like a charm. Here's hoping he doesn't manage to fuck up the First Amendment for actual human beings.
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Is the lawsuit about the public protest ie: assholes with signs, or is about the website speechifying? Snyder's lawyer opening with "Remember we are talking about a funeral..." made it seem like the former,as does this from your link Maturin
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(3) whether an individual attending a family member’s funeral constitutes a “captive audience” who is entitled to state protection from unwanted communication.
Assholes with signs 1000 feet away, reportedly barely glimpsed during the procession and not heard by the victim, is a no brainer...there is no captive audience, there isn't even a regular audience. If it was a real issue then every woman entering a picketed family planning clinic could be suing for IIED whether they saw the protesters or not. The kids at the school with full view of the protests could all sue. If the signs themselves must be factual, I don't even want to look over that slippery slope.
If it's down to the shit posted on Phelp's sites then I can see where the whole public figure and Hustler case is pertinent, but the poem or whatever seemed to be religious speech against the RCC.
Is the lawsuit about the public protest ie: assholes with signs, or is about the website speechifying?
It's about both. Snyder pleaded both sets of events in his complaint and presented evidence of both at trial. I suspect that his lawyers knew that the funeral protest, standing alone, made for an extraordinarily shitty case liability-wise.
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Originally Posted by LadyShea
(3) whether an individual attending a family member’s funeral constitutes a “captive audience” who is entitled to state protection from unwanted communication.
They're many, many miles off base with that captive audience argument. To the extent you can say there's a black letter rule in that regard, it's that "[t]he First Amendment permits the government to prohibit offensive speech as intrusive when the 'captive' audience cannot avoid the objectionable speech." Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 487 (1988). Not exactly a seamless fit here, is it? In fact, it ain't no kinda fit at all.
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Originally Posted by LadyShea
If it's down to the shit posted on Phelp's sites then I can see where the whole public figure and Hustler case is pertinent,
I can't see that at all. Phelps and his merry idiot band made the funeral a media event and tried to keep it rolling by posting shit on their website about how Snyder's parents "taught Matthew to defy his creator," "raised him for the devil," and "taught him that God was a liar." Public figure status arises, if at all, from the conduct and statements of the target. The speaker can't manufacturer a First Amendment "public figure" defense based on the speaker's own statements and conduct.
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Originally Posted by LadyShea
What am I missing?
Nothing, as far as I can tell, LS. You seem to think that Snyder's case is dog shit factually. I agree.
The jury tagged Phelps with $10.9 million in civil liability based on little or nothing more than their determination -- entirely correct in my estimation -- that Phelps and his crew are malevolent bags of mostly shit. I can't count the number of cases in which I wished we could impose civil liability based on nothing more than proving to the jury's satisfaction that the defendant is a malevolent bag of mostly shit. Unfortunately, it don't work that way. Torts have elements, and I don't think Snyder succeeded in creating triable issues of fact on any of his claims.
Courts generally don't decide issues of constitutional law if there's a viable non-constitutional basis for deciding the case. Phelps waived his non-constitutional arguments on appeal, leaving the courts no option but to address the First Amendment questions. The issue characterization and arguments of Snyder's counsel on those issues are breathtakingly bad. First Amendment case law is a cluster fuck in this area already. This case is poised to make things several orders of magnitude worse all by itself.
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Public figure status arises, if at all, from the conduct and statements of the target.
Right, I meant Snyder's public figure status would become an issue due to his being targeted in writing on a website like that. But, Phelps was mostly baggin' on the RCC, and Snyder is a member of the RCC. Phelps' opinions of what that RCC membership means within a family aren't really stating anything about Snyder as fact...again from my interpretation.
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The issue characterization and arguments of Snyder's counsel on those issues are breathtakingly bad
Okay, I thought they were really bad, but then I couldn't figure out how an attorney preparing to argue on front of SCOTUS wouldn't be like "Hmm, my case is shit, and my arguments are shit...we're good to go!" So I assumed I was missing some big important puzzle piece
Public figure status arises, if at all, from the conduct and statements of the target.
I don't know if it's true, but the mostly bag of shit representing the respondent said Snyder made himself a public figure by taking to the airwaves to blather about his dead son every chance he got.
I don't know whether that's true either, but even if Snyder did everything they say I doubt that he made himself a public figure for purposes of anti-gay tirades merely by publicly denouncing the War on T'rr'r.
The lower courts didn't exactly cover themselves with glory on the public figure issue. The trial judge apparently made a very big deal of it, which makes sense given the substantive law, but failed to make any distinction between Mr. Snyder and his deceased son. The court of appeals pointed out the error in a footnote, but decided it was no big deal because Phelps had First Amendment tort immunity regardless of how the public figure analysis shakes out.
In any event, I agree with you that "[w]hatever the decision I'm sure the opinions will be interesting[.]" Even if they assign the first-draft majority opinion to the token retarded teabagger law clerk, it'll end up infinitely clearer than anything the lower courts or the parties have managed to date.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
I support their right to speak and the mourner's right to beat them within an inch of their lives.
I keep saying I wouldn't feel too bad if an IED found its way to Phelps' front door.
I agree with the o.p.
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LadyShea wins the internet! The Supreme Court voted 8-1 (Alito dissenting) in Phelps's favor. The lessons are: (1) dumb lawyering makes bad law; and (2) the U.S. Supreme Court remains the most effective agent of toart refoarm.
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