Westboro Baptist Church can protest at military funerals. The Supreme Court has handed down a decision in the Westboro Baptist Church case. The court rules, 8 – 1, that the father of a slain Marine could not sue the Westboro church for protesting during his son’s funeral.
Call it free speech 101. The hard part about the First Amendment is that you have to allow people to say all manner of annoying, vulgar, and inappropriate things at the wrong times.
Not that Justice Samuel Alito thinks so. Alito was the lone dissenter in this case. Alito was also the lone dissenter in the Stevens case — the one that overturned a ban on animal crush videos on First Amendment grounds. But he voted with the majority in Citizens United.
I can’t wait until Sam “Not True” Alito writes a book or something about exactly why regular people don’t deserve the free speech given to American corporations and sitting Supreme Court Justices. Most reasonable people agree that these Westboro people are distasteful nutjobs. But what can you do. This is America, and everybody has a right to make an ass of themselves. We can’t take away the right of people to act a fool, isn’t that right Alito?