Military Funeral Protests Are Free Speech but Not News

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court held in an 8-to-1 decision that the Constitution's free speech guarantees protect the despicable demonstrations staged at military funerals by a Kansas family group obsessed with homosexuality.

In Snyder v. Phelps et al., Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the First Amendment applied because the protests addressed matters of public concern. At the same time, a dissenting opinion by Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. raised serious questions for media organizations considering coverage of such demonstrations.

The court affirmed an appeals court ruling that Albert Snyder, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, could not be awarded monetary damages for the profound psychological pain he suffered as a result of protests at his son's funeral. Matthew Snyder, 20, was killed in the line of duty in Iraq in 2006.

The funeral in his hometown of Westminster, Md., was targeted for demonstrations by members of the Phelps family of Topeka, Kan., who have conducted similar protests for the last 20 years. The extended family operates through an organization it calls a church and asserts that the deaths are divine punishment for U.S. government policies and tolerant American attitudes toward homosexuality.

The signs at the protests, which took place under police supervision in a fenced area 1,000 feet from the services, used the disgusting language characteristic of the Phelps group, including "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "God Hates Fags" and "God Hates the USA."

(The sexual orientation of the deceased is irrelevant to the Phelps family.

As it happens, Lance Cpl. Snyder was not gay.)

"The placards," Justice Roberts wrote, "highlighted issues of public import — the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of the Nation, homosexuality in the military," and others.

The court did not rule on laws in more than 40 states that attempt to regulate such protests. Last year, a lower court ruled that three Missouri statutes were unconstitutional.

Justice Alito's dissent devoted considerable attention to the Phelps family's media strategy. "This strategy works because it is expected that (the Phelps') verbal assaults will wound the family and friends of the deceased and because the media is irresistibly drawn to the sight of persons who are visibly in grief." The Phelps' advance publicity campaign, he wrote, "guaranteed that Matthew's funeral would be transformed into a raucous media event."

Indeed, Albert Snyder never saw the hurtful protest signs at his son's funeral. He saw them for the first time on television coverage that night.

The Phelps' vile protest antics are not new or newsworthy. News organizations should think long and hard before becoming patsies in Phelps' publicity schemes and, in doing so, inflict even more pain and suffering on grieving military families.

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