Westboro Baptist Church wins another round in court

You may despise their message, but the First Amendment continues to trump people’s wishes to be free of hateful speech near a funeral. Joe Harris reports:

A federal judge has ruled that a Missouri law restricting protests at or near military funerals is unconstitutional. The state enacted the law in 2006 in response to protests from a Kansas Baptist church whose members protest at military funerals, claiming God is punishing U.S. soldiers because the country tolerates homosexuals. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan ruled that the law violates the First Amendment.

Read more on Courthouse News. You can read the opinion in Phelps-Roper v. Koster here (pdf).

Comment decision in NH high court’s hands

Ashley Smith reports:

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a free-speech case that calls into question whether media outlets can protect the identities of anonymous online commenters.

The case also has potentially broad implications in determining who constitutes the media in an Internet age that has blurred the line between traditional news outlets and bloggers or citizen journalists.

[...]

The complex case centers around a mortgage-industry watchdog Web site Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter that posts news from other sources about the housing finance crisis. Last fall, the site posted a story about a New Hampshire company, The Mortgage Specialists Inc., that was being investigated by banking officials for a number of alleged violations, including forging signatures, destroying documents and unfair or deceptive 
business practices.

Along with the story, Implode-O-Meter staff posted a confidential financial document MSI had prepared for the New Hampshire Banking Department, which was provided to them by an unnamed source. Some time later, a writer using the pseudonym “Brianbattersby” posted a comment on the site accusing MSI President Michael Gill of fraud.

Read more in the Nashua Telegraph.

The Citizen Media Law Project provides court documents in the case, The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc.

EPIC urges court to protect speech of privacy advocate

From EPIC.org:

EPIC filed a “friend of the court” brief with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to hold that the First Amendment protects the speech of Betty Ostergren, a privacy advocate. Ostergren runs a Website that republishes Social Security Numbers, collected from public records, to persuade Virginia lawmakers to stop releasing documents that reveal Social Security Numbers. Under Virginia law, Ostergren could be prosecuted for publishing SSNs, even though Virginia makes the numbers widely available. A lower court held that the law violated Ostergren’s First Amendment rights. Virginia appealed. EPIC’s brief urges the appeals court to uphold the lower court’s ruling. For more information, see EPIC Ostergren v. McDonnell.

Previous news coverage of Ostergren’s case can also be found here.

From skanks to douchebags: student internet speech suit back in court

Jim Moore reports:

Avery Doninger will soon return to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with the right of students across the country to speak their minds in blogs and text messages at stake.

Once a 16-year-old high school junior who referred to school administrators as “douchebags” in an online blog post protesting the potential cancellation of a school concert, Doninger, 19, is now a freshman at Eastern Connecticut State University who plans, after a year spent volunteering for AmeriCorps in Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, to make a career in nonprofit management.

[...]

For the plaintiffs, and their legal supporters, the issue boils down to a comparatively simple question: whether school officials have the right to discipline students for off-campus speech.

Read more in Republican-American

.

Westboro Baptist Church wins its appeal

Annie Youderian reports:

Signs declaring “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “Fag troops” at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq may have been “distasteful and vulgar,” but they are nonetheless protected by the First Amendment, the 4th Circuit ruled Thursday, overturning a $5 million verdict against the Westboro Baptist Church.

The three-judge panel in Richmond, Va., vacated the verdict on the ground that it contradicted the Constitution.

Full story here. Court opinion here. (pdf)

The 2007 jury trial had considered three claims based on the funeral protest and an “epic” posted to the church group’s web site: intrusion upon seclusion, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. The jury had found for the Marine’s family on all three claims. Although the 4th Circuit found that the defendants should have prevailed based on the First Amendment, a dissenting opinion by Judge Dennis Shedd is interesting, because he argues that the plaintiff (Snyder) failed to provide sufficient evidence to any of the three tort claims and that the ruling should have been reversed on the grounds of state law and never reached the constitutional issue. With respect to the intrusion upon seclusion claim, Shedd writes:

In light of these cases, it is clear that there was no type of “intrusion” under any of the bases that Snyder asserts. First, as to the funeral protest itself, the Phelps did not “intrude” or “pry” upon any private seclusion. The Phelps never intruded upon a private place because their protest occurred at all times in a public place that was designated by the police and located approximately 1,000 feet from the funeral. Further, the Phelps never confronted Snyder, and Snyder admits he could not see the protest. Finally, there was no intrusion because the evidence is undisputed that the church service was never disrupted.

The Phelps never entered the church, and they stopped protesting when the church service began. In sum, I would hold the funeral protest did not intrude upon Snyder’s seclusion.

Likewise, I would hold that the Phelps’ posting of the “epic” on their church Internet website is not, as a matter of law, an intrusion upon Albert Snyder’s seclusion under Maryland law. In posting the “epic,” the Phelps did not do anything to direct it to Snyder’s attention, such as email or transmit it to him. Cf. Hollander, 351 A.2d at 426 (noting that repeated phone calls may give rise to an intrusion upon seclusion claim). Instead, Snyder learned of the “epic” during an Internet search, and upon finding it he chose to read it. By doing so, any interference with Snyder’s purported interest in seclusion was caused by Snyder himself rather than the Phelps.

In short, I conclude that the verdict on Count One cannot stand. The evidence is insufficient under Maryland law for the jury to have found that the Phelps committed any act that intruded upon Snyder’s right to seclusion.

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