Analysis on the Funeral Protester Case

In the latest Snippets column we made reference to a case which has made its way to the Supreme Court. The case pins the First Amendment rights of protesters against the privacy rights of families. More specifically, a small church, made almost exclusively of family members of the pastor, is using the funerals of soldiers to claim that God is punishing the US for the homosexuality of some of its citizens.

While most people would find such a protest deplorable on its face, it is also true that First Amendment cases that make their way to the Supreme Court don't typically engender a boatload of sympathy on the facts. Indeed it is almost necessarily the most uncomfortable situations created by the most unsavory of characters which require the protective cloak of the First Amendment in the first place. Discussing this, and summarizing some of the directions the Court may choose to go after hearing oral arguments, is an excellent piece by Abigail Field. It can be found here.