Fred Phelps wins

[alnorth]

The Supreme Court has just ruled in an 8-1 decision that if you protest at a funeral, you are immune to lawsuits from the family for inflicting emotional distress.

"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,"

The Chief Justice wrote the opinion. The dissent was written by Alito.

From Alito's lone dissent:

"Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case,"

No one disputed that you have a right to protest at a funeral (ie, you cant be thrown into jail or barred by the government), the question was whether you could be sued if your protest emotionally damages your target at a funeral.

The $5 million judgment against the Phelps clan has been thrown out, and now the father of the dead marine who originally sued has to pay the Phelps' legal bills.

edit: oh, also for the legal nerds out there, that windbag justice Breyer apparently wasn't satisfied with simply signing onto the majority opinion, he wrote his own concurring opinion.

[CrazyPhuD]

someone's gonna get shot!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...orse-al-qaeda/

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

I find it interesting how a kid in any school who calls another kid a "pillowbiter" can be diciplined, but obviously the supreme court thinks it's covered under free speech. I know it's not a one-for-one comparison since they aren't calling the people "pillowbiters", but somehow they've drawn sexual orientation in as the only reason God is killing people overseas. Did they forget the whole "Oil" argument?

The only good news is that they've made fools of themselves as a church as a whole, and God's got a special place in Hell reserved for them.

And it would be nice to know if any of Fred's followers ever dies. It might be worth attending...

In the case of children, the Supreme Court just made shit up (not surprising for those clowns) and ruled that a student's free speech is more limited than an adults.