A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania, sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.
For homophobes – here is your church!
It’s about damn time somebody stood up to these wackos. the jury had some sense to see through the rhetoric.
This is the same group that protested the Matthew Shepard funeral.
I grew up in KS, and it always amazed me that when Fred Phelps came into a small town to protest the end result was bringing the community closer together. Personal differences are no longer significant when this whacko comes to town.
This makes me happy. Not near as happy as a story of these assholes getting the crap beat out them.
What’s amazing is that this church is doing blanket protests to anyone in the military! I wish that 11 million would make a dent in their funding, but I fear they have many people in their cult of hate backing them.
No amount of money is going to change how the funeral went. I’m glad they won the court case. A funeral is no place for a protest.
While I have no sympathy for these nutsacks, I find it troubling that one party can manipulate the court system to bankrupt a second party for legally exercising their right of free speech, by getting a jury to award bullshit emotional distress and punitive damages. While I’m fine with criminal laws that were passed to address funeral protests of this sort, this case was not based on Phelps’ violation of such laws but on the idea that his point of view is unpopular and hurt feelings so they should be bankrupted through civil action.
Maybe I’m offended by the protesters in Jena so I’ll sue them for $100M in emotional damages and make sure it’s an all-white jury. Maybe I don’t like what Dvorak wrote about me on his blog so I’ll SLAPP him around. The idea of liability for emotional damages from the exercise of free speech is a very dangerous precedent because it is so easily manipulated.
Billy Bob,
Your comments are interesting. I didn’t realize that 1st amendment protection permitted libelous and obscene speech. These actions are not political speech, the protestor’s actually scream obscenities during the funerals (I’ve had the unfortunate experience of witnessing these actions 1st hand). This is not a holding that will open the flood gates of spurious litigation…
I remember hearing these guys on the Howard Stern show a while ago. Man I never heard so many people wanting to come through the phone and strangle someone. Who are these nutjobs that back them up? Honestly who are they? Why aren’t they exposed like child porn addicts? Can’t we just send the god hates people to Iraq or whatever country we are invading this week. i am sure Osama would have a field day sending some brainwashed cronies to bomb them, and we would be rid of them. It’s a win-win situation. Let the people who care about religion fight over it. Don’t bring us intellectuals into it.
P.S. “God Hates Haters”
It’s about time Fred Phelps and his minions got to taste the fruits of the discord and vile hatred they sow in the name of Christ. In my view, these A-holes calling themselves “Christians” is an abomination to our religion. Not to mention that their idiotic protests go against the basic tenets of Christianity i.e. “Love your neighbor”.
I’ll stop now or I’d go on all morning.
Pull out your Wallet Rev. Phelps! It’s PAYBACK time!
BEN
A judgment is one thing … try and collect that money. I am kind of hoping the entire crew pulls a Waco.
Throw the book at Phelps and his minion!
They deserve every last drop of wrath that they get, damn hate mongers!
It’s bad enough when a loved one that served in the military dies. It’s worse when there are people cheering his death from the sidelines and gives the grieving family even worse memories of the ceremony. I’m glad to see this judgment.
My two cents.
No chain is stronger than its weakest link… and Phelps is Christianity’s weakest link.
Those of us who are highly critical of religion are so because of these links. And I’m rather unsympathetic to the notion that other “Christians” are better people because if they were they’d rise up and drum these asshats out of the faith altogether.
As long as I don’t hear a scathing critique of Phelps and a campaign to shut him down coming from the 700 Club, then the 700 club is no different than Phelps, and that goes for every church.
sure these wackos were out of line morally, but not legally…
The courts arent supposed to choose sides, but that is exactly what they did here, helping to destroy freedom of speech in the process. Post 9/11 we are gleefully throwing away the rights that we are supposedly fighting to protect and this is just another case of that happening.
flame away.
just take ’em out back and shoot ’em
they’re worse than the hippies who harassed vietnam vets
those soldiers died believing they were protecting us and they deserve full and complete respect — period.
you don’t like the war? tell gw about — you don’t hassle the foot soldiers
I think a resounding hell yea pay up you assholes is in order.
#13 – There are no rights being trampled. I have a first amendment right to speak or write my opinion publicly. I don’t have a right to crash your daughter’s wedding and shout at her that she’s a slut during the ceremony.
What these asshats do is crash funerals and disrupt private ceremonies with chaos and hate.
I’m a First Amendment absolutist. Few get as riled about speech issues as I do. And I have no problem with Phelps being spanked and spanked hard.
#5,13 – Free speech does not protect libel, is not a license to disorderly or disruptive conduct and does not give a right to disrupt a private ceremony. I’m sure a lawyer could throw out a lot more actions Phelps and co. performed that are not protected.
These asshats deserve what they get out of this. I too hope to see a Waco type ending. Good riddance.
#16, OFTLO/TP, thanks, saved me a lot of time.
Wonder what his daughters will think when thousands show up at Daddy’s funeral shouting epithets? Paybacks are a b*tch.
I can’t see how protesting a funeral is equal to freedom of speech….. I mean, everyone has the right to say what they want (well, most countries draw a line at actively promoting sedition or violence against a group of a people) but that don’t have the right to say whenever they want, and they certainly don’t have the right to protest a funeral.
If if the grand wizard of the KKK died during a lynching because the flaming cross fell on him, it’d still be tasteless to protest at his funeral….
I don’t see why these nutjobs are just locked up…. everyone else seems to be ….
I agree with prior posters that Phelps’ actions can properly be regulated by the state without violating his 1st Amendment rights. That’s not the issue I’m raising.
The issue is whether or not a private citizen should be able to sue political protestors and have a jury award an exhorbitant judgment based solely on emotional distress and punitive damages, especially if such actions were legal at the time. I don’t believe libel was charged here–they just sued for ‘unspecified damages’ counting on a jury to be equally outraged. You guys are arguing that the ends (sticking it to Phelps) justifies the means (setting the above precedent). To me that opens up a tort loophole for private parties to SLAPP anyone who organizes a protest who will be unsympathetic to a jury. Free speech isn’t free if you are vulnerable to bankruptcy if someone wants to silence you.
It’s easy to get behind the free speech of bloggers who are sued by people trying to get even with them; it’s the marginal cases like this where commitment to principles is tested. I don’t like the idea of juries being empowered to bankrupt people for committing “thought crimes”.
These self-righteous, self-centered idiots are not practicing free speech- they are invading the privacy of others. A funeral is not a public event, and a cemetery is not a public venue.
Disrupting a funeral intentionally is a selfish, inconsiderate, and disgusting act. Do the mourners really care if the cause of death was legal or illegal, ill-conceived or noble? Dead is dead, and grief is grief.
Billy Bob is wrong. The goal here IS to bankrupt a group such as this. These people should be forced to hock all they own. If they are so committed to their cause, then put up the money and continue on. If their cause is just, then others will flock to their aid in support of their mission. However, I feel pretty certain that they will NOT be buried under bags of mail a la “Miracle on 34th St.”
Unfortunately, Improbus is right. They will never collect. This blight on my religion will be allowed to stay open during appeal after appeal, and then miraculously there will be no money left after legal costs to pay the judgment. THAT’S where the legal system falls down. It’s not in bankrupting the loser. It’s that the victors never collect on their judgment until years of frivolous appeals, and then there’s mysteriously nothing left. Hmm…
#20 – The issue is whether or not a private citizen should be able to sue political protestors and have a jury award an exhorbitant judgment based solely on emotional distress and punitive damages,
Vinny (in #21) is right. Money is how we fight. And I have no problem when good takes the money of evil. What do you think would be fair?
These guys don’t bust into the church and disrupt the ceremony do they? Standing on a public street with signs and saying idiotic stuff should not be actionable. This is bogus, I hope its overturned.
A few years ago these guys were supposed to come to our town to protest a performance of the Laramie Project. I went to their website to see when they were supposed to be here and they had pdfs advertising their protest that they wanted people to download and post. The thing is that although it was a pdf and they probably had the original, they made it look blurry and smudged as if it were a copy of a copy of a copy. I can only guess they did that so that if someone saw it they would think that there was this real grassroots thing supporting them. weird
#23 – What they do should be actionable. It is actionable. Its just a shame we can’t dispense with the money and just beat the fuck out of them.
A few years ago my partner and I played with the Houston Pride Band at a grand opening of a gay owned/centric hotel in Galveston. There was alot of talk about the Phelps people and some other anti-gay protesters. I heard there was a small handful of people (like 4 or something) earlier in the day, but nothing by the time we were there. So I guess the Phelps crew were too busy harassing dead queers’ families elsewhere.
Check this out:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=184
At first blush you say, well payback’s a bitch. On the other hand, look at all of the frivolous lawsuit damage Phelps has been able to do over the years using the courts. I would like everyone to not be able to harass everyone else through the courts, because it’ll never stop. Government should not be getting involved except to criminalize the funeral protesting that we all agree is abhorrent.
Vinny (in #21) is right. Money is how we fight. And I have no problem when good takes the money of evil.
I don’t think government should allow itself to be drafted into a particular group’s (that always designates itself “the good”) campaign to destroy other groups (always “the evil”). It threatens all of us when it takes off the referee shirt and enters the game for one team or the other. That’s why we don’t let it establish a national religion, for example.
This isn’t a freedom of speech issue. The government is not squelching someone’s right to vent his spleen.
A group of citizens inflicted libel against someone they didn’t know, and chose a venue guaranteed to inflict maximum pain upon innocents for the sole purpose of satisfying their own agenda. The father of the deceased soldier took exception to their actions and brought a civil suit against the offending party. A jury of fellow citizens sided with the father.
Some of you really ought to read the Constitution — “freedom of speech” doesn’t mean what you think it does.
#27 – Honestly Billy… what do you think the courts are for?
If my son were in Iraq and came home in a body bag, you bet I’d be distressed enough as it is. Now Phelps shows up and disrupts my son’s funeral claiming his death was based on our tolerance of sodomy?
Phelps is going to court, or I’m putting a bullet into each of his daughter’s skulls while he watches.
What do you think the courts are for? We don’t have to take the law into our own hands because we have recourse through the court systems. It will never end? I hope it will never end. The alternative should scare the hell out of all of us.
The referenced article really doesn’t give enough details–but I was surprised to find out that protest is illegal at Federal graveyards?
Surely this speech is as idiotic as it is offensive–but not as far as I can tell one that comes near to advocating violence such as KKK and Nazi and NAMBLA group oriented speech?
So, seems to me this really is an excellent case to evaluate just how free speech “absolutists” anyone thinks they are? Yes, freedom for speech we agree with, hate speech for that we disapprove of.
Again, details are missing but is it a proper recognition of freedom of speech to grant damages for invasion of privacy or emotional distress whether such is based on some attendant property trespass or not? Again (again!)—not going to the nutbag religious hatred on display==going to whether or not anyone is truely an advocate of free speech.
Be for free speech or against it, but don’t speak out of both sides of your mouth. One Hilliary is enough.