A three-judge panel for that circuit ruled last September that (Pastor) Phelps’s anti-gay messages – on placards and a Web site – are protected speech

The U.S. Supreme Court continues its unpredictable foray into LGBT-related legal conflicts, this week announcing that it will decide whether a protester has a First Amendment right to use a private funeral service as a staging ground for their hate speech against gays.

It’s a complicated case, and one in which one of the LGBT community’s strongest allies – the American Civil Liberties Union – has taken sides with one of the LGBT community’s most hostile enemies – Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

The court’s acceptance of this case, Snyder v. Phelps , comes less than two months after the court agreed to take Doe v. Reed, to examine whether state law can require public disclosure of the names of people who signed a petition to force a referendum on a domestic partnership law in Washington state.

The full court also took the unusual action in January of blocking a federal judge in San Francisco from allowing a closed-circuit broadcast of the Proposition 8 trial because supporters of the initiative claimed they could be harassed if the public trial was widely viewed.

This Snyder case seeks to undo a ruling in Phelps’s favor in the conservative 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel for that circuit ruled last September that Phelps’s anti-gay messages – on placards and a Web site – are protected speech. The fact that the high court has decided to hear the case indicates that at least four of the nine justices believe that ruling may have been in error.

http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=4615