First Amendment upheld 8-1

[loinburger]

I also love the double standards you and others have. When I have pointed out others stereotyping racial minority groups, women, or gays, you or others label me as a PC nut.

When I bring up a point based on demographic and polling information, you willfully misinterpret it as stereotyping.

You are hopeless.

[SpencerH]

It's clearly protected speech so it's the correct decision.

We had these fools come down here about 6 months ago. They were not allowed close to the funeral and AFAIK there were no incidents despite the high level of public outrage and southern willingness to take the law into their own hands if they disrupted the funeral in any way. They're *******s but problems to the bereaved can be avoided.

MF, put up or shut up. Show us the statistics indicating that conservatives are homophobic. Not opposed to homosexuality due to religious beliefs, homophobic.

[loinburger]

Hey MrFun, 95% of all child molesters are men, therefore men shouldn't be allowed to be elementary school teachers or daycare workers.

Similarly, most of the pedophile Catholic priests molested boys, therefore homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to be Catholics.

And so on.

When you make an offensive generalization "based on demographics etc" then guess what, you're stereotyping.

And I don't think anybody thinks you're a PC nut. You're an obnoxious douchebag. They're not the same thing.

[MrFun]

Show us the statistics indicating that conservatives are homophobic. Not opposed to homosexuality due to religious beliefs, homophobic.

Religious beliefs against homosexuality is the same thing as homophobia IMO.

[MrFun]

I also tried finding polling/demographic information about American political ideology and military service, but all I could find, was information that dealt with gender, race, or class in conjunction with military service.

[Arrian]

Funman - quit digging, seriously.

@ sloww missing Loin's obvious sarcasm.

Supreme Court, sans Alito:

-Arrian

[Al B. Sure!]

I also love the double standards you and others have. When I have pointed out others stereotyping racial minority groups, women, or gays, you or others label me as a PC nut.

When I bring up a point based on demographic and polling information, you willfully misinterpret it as stereotyping.

MrFun, I can't find any right now but I have read and posted on Apolyton studies indicating that the political affiliations of enlisted persons mirror that of the general US population as a whole which actually is to be expected. They are conservative only insofar as the American people are conservative. Officers and senior enlisted, however, do tend to be more conservative than the US population, but actually self-identification as Republicans has declined from as high as 60% a few years ago to 41% according to an April 2010 Military Times survey. (http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/04/military_poll_advance_041110w/)

However, one thing to keep in mind is that the most liberal of Americans obviously are not represented in the military. The hippies with gauges in their ears who smoke bowls every day have no interest in our volunteer military.

A few observations concerning you, however. I find it interesting/offensive that you feel the need to impose your own political concerns on this topic; yes, Fred Phelps hates gays but really? You're demonizing the fallen Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder and his family in a time of grief on the basis of an unsupported assumption concerning their stance on gay rights to further your own obsessive compulsive obsession with gay rights?

Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder has no stance on gay rights. He's dead. Died in service to OUR country and protecting OUR lives and freedoms.

[OzzyKP]

Free speech
Supreme Court

[flash9286]

Flash, can you explain why this would not fall under the "fighting words" doctrine as defined by the Court?

Well, as far as I know, the "fighting words" doctrine wasn't argued in the courts below, so it wasn't an issue before the SCOTUS. I haven't keep up with the case, but my guess is the speech probably wasn't individualized enough or directed enough towards the plaintiffs to be fighting words.

Edit: Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment professor, seems to agree:

The Phelpsians' Picketing and Fighting Words:
I've argued in earlier posts that the verdict against Phelps should be set aside because the intentional infliction of emotional distress tort is facially overbroad and thus unconstitutional as applied to speech. The tort might be constitutional if a court limits it to applying only to otherwise unprotected speech (such as threats, fighting words, and so on); but it has not been so limited.

Still, some say, what if the tort is so limited, perhaps by the appellate court in this case, and liability is defended on the grounds that the Phelpsians' speech was unprotected under the "fighting words" exception? I expect that would require reversing the verdict and retrying the case, since the jury wasn't required to find that the speech was fighting words -- but why not have such a retrial, or perhaps even affirm the verdict on the grounds that the speech was clearly fighting words and thus the failure to instruct the jury more narrowly was harmless error?

Under the "fighting words" exception, speech is unprotected if "tend[s] to incite an immediate breach of the peace" by provoking a fight, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), so long as the speech consists of a "personally abusive epithet[] which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, [is], as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction," Cohen v. California (1971), and is "directed to the person of the hearer," and is thus likely to be seen as "a direct personal insult." See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942); Cohen v. California (1971).

I have no doubt that the speech here would lead many listeners to want to punch the speaker; it would lead me to want to do that, too. But the "direct personal insult" requirement is important, or else the doctrine would lead to the punishment of a vast range of controversial speech: picket signs that condemn strikebreakers; abortion clinic protests that call abortion providers "murderers" or "babykillers"; military base protests that call soldiers "murderers" or "babykillers"; a wide range of public speech that some see as racist, sexist, antigay, religiously bigoted, anti-immigrant; and so on. And of course, as I mentioned for the emotional distress tort, the speech would then be punishable through civil lawsuits, through criminal prosecutions, and through other mechanisms, such as universities disciplining students for engaging in the supposed fighting words.

Fortunately, courts have in recent decades read the fighting words exception narrowly, to prevent the punishment of such speech. Likewise, condemning a dead soldier, much as it might offend the soldier's relatives, would not and should not be covered by the fighting words exception. And if it were found to be covered by such an exception, then I'd expect to see the exception grow to include many of the examples I mentioned.

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_11_04-2007_11_10.shtml#1194480007

[Asher]

Free speech
Supreme Court

Blind Dogma

[C0ckney]

thumbs

[MrFun]

MrFun, I can't find any right now but I have read and posted on Apolyton studies indicating that the political affiliations of enlisted persons mirror that of the general US population as a whole which actually is to be expected. They are conservative only insofar as the American people are conservative. Officers and senior enlisted, however, do tend to be more conservative than the US population, but actually self-identification as Republicans has declined from as high as 60% a few years ago to 41% according to an April 2010 Military Times survey. (http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/04/military_poll_advance_041110w/)

However, one thing to keep in mind is that the most liberal of Americans obviously are not represented in the military. The hippies with gauges in their ears who smoke bowls every day have no interest in our volunteer military.

A few observations concerning you, however. I find it interesting/offensive that you feel the need to impose your own political concerns on this topic; yes, Fred Phelps hates gays but really? You're demonizing the fallen Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder and his family in a time of grief on the basis of an unsupported assumption concerning their stance on gay rights to further your own obsessive compulsive obsession with gay rights?

Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder has no stance on gay rights. He's dead. Died in service to OUR country and protecting OUR lives and freedoms.

My posts were not about Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder. I did not denigrate him in any way. Nor did I even pretend to know what Snyder's own personal stance on gays was. I have been talking about these protests in general, and hypocritical reactions that many conservatives had in regard to those protests.

But I was mistaken - the information you found disproves my earlier statement about the political demographic of the U.S. military.

[Krill]

Good to know Phelps isn't allowed into the UK.

[DinoDoc]

Well, as far as I know, the "fighting words" doctrine wasn't argued in the courts below, so it wasn't an issue before the SCOTUS. I haven't keep up with the case, but my guess is the speech probably wasn't individualized enough or directed enough towards the plaintiffs to be fighting words.

Edit: Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment professor, seems to agree:

In addition, the Phelpses published an “epic” on their website that clearly targeted Matthew Snyder personally, entitled “The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder.” In the epic, the Phelpses accuse Albert Snyder and his ex-wife Julie Snyder of teaching Matthew to defy his creator and to divorce and commit adultery, of raising him for the devil, and of teaching him that God is a liar. The epic went on to state that God “rose up” Matthew in order to kill him and that Matthew “fulfilled his calling” to create an opportunity for others to preach God’s word.

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/supreme-court/snyder-v.-phelps,-the-supreme-court%27s-speech%11tort-jurisprudence,-and-normative-considerations/

How individualized does it have to be?

[flash9286]

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/supreme-court/snyder-v.-phelps,-the-supreme-court%27s-speech%11tort-jurisprudence,-and-normative-considerations/

How individualized does it have to be?

The "epic" wasn't argued in the case.

1
A few weeks after the funeral, one of the picketers posted a message
on Westboro’s Web site discussing the picketing and containing religiously oriented denunciations of the Snyders, interspersed among
lengthy Bible quotations. Snyder discovered the posting, referred to by
the parties as the “epic,” during an Internet search for his son’s name.
The epic is not properly before us and does not factor in our analysis.
Although the epic was submitted to the jury and discussed in the courts
below, Snyder never mentioned it in his petition for certiorari. See Pet.
for Cert. i (“Snyder’s claim arose out of Phelps’ intentional acts at
Snyder’s son’s funeral” (emphasis added)); this Court’s Rule 14.1(g)
(petition must contain statement “setting out the facts material to
consideration of the question presented”). Nor did Snyder respond to
the statement in the opposition to certiorari that “[t]hough the epic was
asserted as a basis for the claims at trial, the petition . . . appears to be
addressing only claims based on the picketing.” Brief in Opposition 9.
Snyder devoted only one paragraph in the argument section of his
opening merits brief to the epic. Given the foregoing and the fact that
an Internet posting may raise distinct issues in this context, we decline
to consider the epic in deciding this case. See Ontario v. Quon, 560
U. S. ___, ___– ___ (2010) (slip op., at 10–12

Moreover, I don't know if posting something on the internet is likely to produce an imminent breach of the peace as required by the fighting words doctrine. But it has been a while since I took First Amendment law.