Does fathers pain trump free speech?
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices, in a rare public display of sympathy, strongly suggested Wednesday they would like to rule for a dead Marine’s father against fundamentalist church members who picketed his son’s funeral — but aren’t sure they can. Left unresolved after an hourlong argument that explored the limits of the First Amendment: Does the father’s emotional pain trump the protesters’ free-speech rights? The difficulty of the constitutional issue was palpable in the courtroom as the justices weighed the case of Albert Snyder. Snyder’s son died in Iraq in 2006, and members of a family-dominated church in Topeka, Kan., protested at the funeral to express their view that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are God’s punishment for American immorality and tolerance of homosexuality and abortion. Margie Phelps, arguing the case for her family’s Westboro Baptist Church, said the message of the protests at military funerals and elsewhere is, “Nation, hear this little church. If y
