Supreme Court Groupies!!!

   Firstly, I'm not actually a Supreme Court groupie. I have a feeling that is not actually a thing. But I'm kind of an American Civil Liberties Union groupie, at least to the extent that I'm a fan of the ACLU on Facebook and a lot of the issues being brought up by said organization also involve the Supreme Court. The Court actually has a pretty interesting session ahead, with the appeal of California's Prop 8 to be reviewed next year being highly anticipated. There's also November's Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Assoc. (California doesn't want violence in video games--is this a free speech violation?) , December's Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (involving Arizona and immigration and privacy, which, if SB 1070 taught us anything, is a super-exciting combination), and next year's FCC v. AT&T (do corporations maintain personal privacy? fun stuff!). Interestingly, newest Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagan, won't be sitting on or voting for about half the docket, since she was recently solicitor general. This means that a good deal of cases could end in a tie vote, and then have to resort to the original ruling of the lower court. She will, however, be present throughout my favorite case on the docket, Snyder v. Phelps, which began October 6th with the arguments set forth by Summers (Snyder's lawyer) and Phelps' lawyer/daughter (apparently it's a good idea to raise a bunch of semi-competent lawyers when you're running a hateful religious group that nobody likes). This case is complex, in its way, involving First Amendment rights and privacy and the limits of free speech, particularly of really, really unpopular opinions. This is why the ACLU supports Phelps -- well, not exactly Phelps, since the ACLU isn't really into handing out "God Hates America" signs to little girls so they can protest military funerals, but the ACLU supports his and his Westboro Baptist Church's right to free speech.
   Westboro Baptist Church, which Phelps is in charge of, is a really small organization which has been disowned by the actual Baptist church, is intolerant of basically everyone, and has a URL called "godhatesfags" which describes how God is punishing America by killing soldiers because of our acceptance of homosexuality, out-of-wedlock sex, Judaism, and Catholicism, all neatly organized around a running tally of souls which God is damning to hell each minute. These are not exactly likable people or, given the fact that everything they say is hateful and totally groundless, rational individuals. In 2006, WBC picketed Snyder's son, a Marine's, funeral; although Snyder did not see the protests during the funeral, as they had been strategically placed 300 feet from the procession as per a Maryland law, he did see the hateful signs on the news that evening and read the "epic poem" on WBC's website which describes how just it was of Snyder's son to die. Snyder won the case in Maryland, lost in the Fourth District Court, and so, here it is, before the Supreme Court. Summers, the lawyer, began with a statement about how emotional duress was placed on a family during a funeral, and, after being passed around from judge to judge until he was thoroughly eaten alive, started invoking Hustler v. Falwell over and over again, even though that case "involved intentional emotional distress" (a cartoon in a Larry Flynt publication constitutes emotional distress? Yeah right) inflicted upon a public figure, not a private citizen, which Snyder is and his son was. Summers seemed rather intimidated by the Justices, at least from my reading of the transcripts, and rightly so; what he was saying was not totally applicable to the case. The judges contributed greatly, with an interesting question raised by Justice Breyer-- "under what circumstances can a group of people broadcast on television something about a private individual that's very obnoxious [and] to what extent can they put that on the Internet, where the victim is likely to see it?" Justice Ginsburg continually went back to the private v. public nature of the Snyder family, and then how much precedent cases like Hustler v. Falwell or Gertz v. Welch really take in this particular case. And Justice Scalia insisted that Summers stop talking about the funeral thing and say what he really meant, which would be that this is a case involving personal attacks-- but, conversely, how personal were they if similar protests occurred in Annapolis at the same time they occurred at the funeral? Is this just general hatred? This case is turning out to be not just about a man who lost his son going against a hate group, or just the freedom of speech v. freedom to worship peacefully argument that most people had expected it to be; this involves the relevance of freedom of speech electronically, the differentiation between a private citizen and a public figure if a very public attack is made on that individual, and really where freedom of speech turns into libel or hate crime. It harkens back to the concerns of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the very reason the First Amendment was made at all: to protect the opinions of the minority, particularly the unpopular opinions. The content is not so much the issue here, it's the action, and as deranged as the opinions expressed are, they may very well prove to be legally expressed.