Today’s Snyder v. Phelps decision from the Supreme Court of the United States maintained the extensive protections afforded to speech in our country. This case was initiated by a father whose son was killed while serving in the military. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, picketed the military funeral, and the father sued claiming that such picketing inflicted severe emotional distress.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church regularly attend military funerals where they display signs which attribute the deaths of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to God’s punishment for America’s acceptance of homosexuality.
The Supreme Court found that, however hurtful the protest was for the father, the First Amendment protected the church’s speech.
