Snyder v. Phelps – The Military Funeral Protestor Case

     This case is back in the news because the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the losing party to pay the attorney fees of the winning party - which would normally not be news.  But in this case the losing party was the family of a fallen marine, and the winning party was a religious group who exploited his funeral to garner publicity for their hate-filled political and religious tirades.  In this post I describe how the appellate court came to the conclusion that the protestors had the right, under the First Amendment, to engage in vicious verbal attacks during and after this soldier's funeral.

     On March 3, 2006, Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq in the line of duty.  His funeral was held in his hometown of Westminster, Maryland, at St. John's Catholic Church. 

     The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas consists of about 60 members, of whom about 50 are members of one family related to the pastor, Fred W. Phelps, Sr.  Members of the congregation demonstrate near military funerals to gather attention for their crusade against homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church.  After notifying the media, they showed up outside the church where Matthew Snyder's funeral was held carrying the following signs:

"America is Doomed," "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "Pope in Hell," "Fag Troops," "Semper Fi Fags," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "Don�t Pray for the USA," "Thank God for IEDs," "Priests Rape Boys," and "God Hates Fags."

     A key finding in this case was that the protestors obeyed local ordinances and police instructions as to where they could mount their protest, and they did not directly confront the family.  The trial court found:

It was undisputed at trial that Defendants complied with local ordinances and police directions with respect to being a certain distance from the church. Furthermore, it was established at trial that Snyder did not actually see the signs until he saw a television program later that day with footage of the Phelps family at his son�s funeral.

Following the funeral Shirley L. Phelps-Roper  posted an "Epic" to the internet entitled "The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder," stating that Matthew's parents

"taught Matthew to defy his creator," "raised him for the devil," and "taught him that God was a liar."

     The Snyder family sued the Church and the demonstrators on several theories, three of which they proceeded to trial on: intrusion upon seclusion,  intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conpiracy.  The jury awarded the Snyders a verdict of over $10 million, which the trial court reduced to $5 million. 

     The Court of Appeals reviewed the verdict as if it were a defamation case – as if the Snyder family were claiming that the Westboro Church had injured their reputation by telling lies about them.   That claim had been dismissed by the District Court, but the opinion of the Court of Appeals focused on whether the Westboro Church had made provably false statements about the Snyder family.  The Court said:

[N]o reasonable reader could interpret any of these signs as asserting actual and objectively verifiable facts about Snyder or his son. The signs reading "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11" and "Don�t Pray for the USA," for example, are not concerned with any individual, but rather with the nation as a whole. Other signs (those referring to "fags," "troops," and "dead soldiers") use the plural form, which would lead a reasonable reader to conclude that the speaker is referring to a group rather than an individual. Additional signs are concerned with individuals, such as the Pope, who are entirely distinct from Snyder and his son, or with groups, such as priests, to which neither Snyder nor his son belong. Finally, those signs stating "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for IEDs" only constitute a reference to Snyder�s son if the reader makes the assumption that their only object is Matthew Snyder and not the thousands of other soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, often as a result of IEDs.

     The Court of Appeals concluded that these statements were protected by the First Amendment for three reasons: (1) the statements n the signs did not refer to Matthew Snyder or his family; (2) the signs did not make factual statements that were provably false; and (3) the statements were merely "hyperbolic and imaginative rhetoric intended to spark debate …."  The Court came to similar conclusions about the statements made in the internet posting:

Despite referring to the Snyder family by name, the Epic is primarily concerned with the Defendantsâ�� strongly held views on matters of public concern. … [T]he Defendantsâ�� extensive funeral picketing activities predated Matthewâ��s funeral and continue to this day throughout the country, with many of the signs displayed at Matthewâ��s funeral also being displayed in other protests. Thus, even when the Snyders are mentioned in the Epic, a reasonable reader would understand its contents to be primarily focused on the more general message to which their protests are directed. The Defendants assert in the Epic, for example, that the Snyders had incurred Godâ��s wrath by raising Matthew as a Catholic and allowing him to serve in the military â�� assertions a reasonable reader would take as focused on the Defendantsâ�� concerns with the policies and activities of the Roman Catholic Church and the military.

     The Court concluded:

Notwithstanding the distasteful and repugnant nature of the words being challenged in these proceedings, we are constrained to conclude that the Defendants� signs and Epic are constitutionally protected.

     The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a courageous decision in defense of the First Amendment.  Few organizations in recent memory have mounted protests as despicable as those of the Westboro Church.  However, in my opinion, the Court's analysis entirely misses the point.   This was not a defamation case.  This was a case where a group intentionally  invaded another family's privacy.  There is no doubt that Reverend Phelps and his flock have the right, under the First Amendment, to denounce America, denigrate our troops, and defame an entire religion.  What they may not do is exploit a private family's grief by demonstrating near a funeral.  The Fourth Circuit acknowledges that over forty states and cities have enacted laws prohibiting demonstrations at funerals, and near the end of its opinion it concedes that these laws, if narrowly drawn, are constitutional.  That is almost certainly correct.  The Supreme Court has upheld laws prohibiting protests that target individual residences; in Frisby v. Schultz (1988) the Court ruled that abortion protestors do not have a constitutional right to picket the home of a physician who performs abortions.  A properly drawn content neutral law prohibiting demonstrations that target private funerals might very well be upheld.

     This was not a defamation case; it was a privacy case.  While the defendants may not have made demonstrably false statements about the Snyders, they admittedly targeted the family as the focus of its righteous wrath.  The Fourth Circuit should have grappled with the question of whether the privacy of the home may be extended to the area around a church during a funeral, and whether the fact that the demonstrators obeyed local ordinances and did not directly confront the family immunized them from suit.  It was not only what the defendants said but where they said it that constituted the injury.  Had they made these same comments at the time of the funeral in Topeka, Kansas, or Washington, D.C., instead of near the church in Westminster, Maryland, it would have greatly mitigated the injury to the family.  It is one thing to picket a lunch counter that refuses to serve blacks; it is another to picket the home or the funeral of the owner of such a lunch counter.

Tagged as: constitution, defamation, First Amendment, fred w. phelps, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, matthew snyder, snyder v. phelps