Supreme Court denies Westboro Baptist Church request for bond relief
Feb 24th, 2008 by Rob
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday that it would not grant members of the Westboro Baptist Church financial relief while they appeal a lower court decision in a case involving the disruption of a military funeral.
The notorious religious sect, led by pastor Fred Phelps, has garnered national attention for its practice of picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq; members believe that God killed the soldiers out of wrath for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality. A typical funeral protest involves more than a dozen church members waving signs that say “God Hates Fags” and loudly chanting through bullhorns within earshot of the funeral-goers.
In 2006, the church organized a protest at the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, during which Matthew’s father Albert Snyder claims members inflicted emotional distress and invaded privacy. Three weeks ago a U.S. district court judge decided in favor of Snyder, ordering the church to pay damages of $10.9 million (later reduced to $5 million).
Westboro is in the process of bringing the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals, and had filed a request to defer the payment of their bond; the Supreme Court’s Friday decision denied them this request, and the district court judge ordered the church to surrender financial documents related to the case.
The Westboro church conundrum is one of the most profound tests of the First Amendment. The group’s abrasive protest techniques—which are practiced not only at soldiers’ funerals but also those of rape victims, Virginia Tech shooting victims, and other high-profile figures—have inspired an ongoing and heated debate on how “hateful” this type of expression can be before it loses its First Amendment protection. Several states have passed laws creating 300-foot buffer zones around funeral sites, and groups of counter-protesters continue to interfere with the church’s demonstrations (including the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycling outfit on a mission to “Shield the mourning family and their friends from interruptions created by any protester or group of protesters”).
The current lawsuit’s outcome could indeed draw such a line and set a standard for the extent that speech—hateful or otherwise—may interfere with a family’s most private moments.
