I’m not aware of a constitutional right to quiet.
No but I have a right to free speech as much as you do. If you come to my gathering in the park where I am addressing some people (willing listeners) and you start shouting over me such that I cannot speak (inasmuch as my listeners cannot hear me or are distracted) I’d say you’ve stepped on my rights of free speech.
Something has to give. How would you decide it?
I’d say, “Too bad for you.” I’m not the government. The first amendment is not binding on me.
Ah…so you can walk into a crowded theater and shout “Fire!”?
No, but others have mentioned over and over in this thread how the first amendment does not always trump other laws—such as disturbing the peace. Noise ordinances trump free speech issues nearly 100% of the time. If you shout your diatribe outside my bedroom window at 3am, you’ll get arrested. At 3pm, probably not. If you shout so loud that you completely disrupt a peaceable assembly, you may face repercussions from the authorities. If you whisper derisive comments about the speaker’s arguments to your friend during the assembly, you probably won’t.
It seems the law agrees that speech is free. Volume, however, can be legislated.
The government does not seem to agree with you. If you watched the news concerning town hall meetings and the health care bill you’d have seen that those who were loudest and most obnoxious were able to dominate the town halls.
I don’t think they were stepping on free speech as much as they were stepping on your ability to be heard. Being heard is not a right and I don’t think it should be.
Sometimes a free society just sucks but I’m not willing to trade it away because some people are jerks.
Those people may have dominated but unless someone objects to their disruption and has them taken away or otherwise silenced not sure there is an issue.
In WEISE v. CASPER it seems the 10th Circuit Court said it was ok for two people to be removed from a speech then President Bush was giving (a speech open to the public) because they showed up with a car that had a bumper sticker that said “No Blood for Oil”. That’s it and yeah, you should be appalled.
While the facts in that case are not entirely applicable here I will note that the dissent noted that their speech (the bumper sticker) was not disruptive nor was there any evidence that they intended to be disruptive at the speech.
I take it from that the courts do distinguish disruptive speech from other kinds of speech.
In Tinker v. Des Moines (SCOTUS case) the issue seemed to turn on whether the speech was disruptive. The students wore armbands as a means of protest. The majority said it was not disruptive (thus protected), the minority thought it was.
I may be glossing over a lot of details here but my point is the language of the courts when looking at free speech issues definitely seems to include whether or not that speech is disruptive. If course that is subjective but I think protesting a funeral within sight of the funeral and shouting epithets is distinctly disruptive (although in this case looks like they were not within sight of the funeral…they have been at other times though).
That… really doesn’t make sense as a rebuttal to what I just wrote.
Yes, but those limitations are content neutral, and have nothing to do with preventing someone else from being heard.
No, I probably won’t, unless I’m violating the aforementioned content neutral noise pollution statutes. If there’s no law against me screaming my head off in a public park, then the government can’t arrest me from screaming my head off in a public park while you’re trying to have a peaceful assembly there. The government can’t prevent me from exercising my first amendment rights just because I’m making it harder for you to exercise your first amendment rights.
If you disagree, consider this. The KKK plans to march through town. The NAACP, in response, organizes a counter-protest. Should the KKK be allowed to have the NAACP arrested, because their counter-protest is making it more difficult for the KKK to express their ideas?
Did the KKK get permits allowing them exclusive use of certain streets at certain times for their march?
There are, however, constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and right to privacy, and statutory rights of seculsion and the right to not suffer the “intentional infliction of emotional distress”.
Which of those apply to this specific situation? The only one that I can see that fits here is the right to peaceful assembly - on behalf of the WBC. Westboro isn’t preventing anyone else from assembling, after all, and “peaceful,” in this context, doesn’t mean “quiet.” As I understand it, it means, “riots don’t count.”
The plaintiff alleged all of them (and defamation too). The trial court threw out the defamation and the invasion of privacy ones. The jury verdict came back on the basis of intrusion into seculsion, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a conspiracy count.
The intrusion into seclusion dealt with the jagoffs (it’s a legal term) intentionally invading a private affair (the funeral), in an offensive manner, causing injury. The intentional infliction of emotional distress deals with intentionallyl causing someone to suffer extreme emotional distress. This one seems to fit the facts the best. The jagoffs intentionally picketed the funeral in an extreme and outrageous manner, causing severe emotional distress to the family (I think it was the father who sued). The question then became whether the jagoffs actions causing the distress were protected by the First Amendment.
I’m not really familiar with the concept of “intrusion into seclusion,” although it does sound like a great album title for a prog rock band. How does that work, exactly? Could, say, the G8 say that their summit is a private affair and have the usual mobs of protesters arrested for intruding on their seclusion? How exactly is seclusion defined, here?
As far as emotional distress goes, I’m pretty leery of the concept in general. I can see some places where it makes sense: if someone deliberately killed my dog, for example, just suing for the value of the animal (which would be pretty paltry - he’s a mutt I got from the pound) seems inadequate. On the other hand, in this situation, it seems that the distress inflicted would be equal if they didn’t protest the funeral at all, and the father just read their statements on a website. If you can be held criminally or financially liable just for saying something that someone else finds sufficiently upsetting, that sounds like a pretty dangerous incursion into our first amendment rights, which were created in the first place to protect people who want to say upsetting or unpopular things.
I laid out a scenario where you were being disruptive of my speech. You said, “Too bad for you. I’m not the government. The first amendment is not binding on me.”
The implication being you are free to be as disruptive as you want.
So, by your take, you should be able to walk into a theater and yell “fire”. You are not the government, too bad for everyone there, you are free to disrupt the proceedings there.
What it sounded like you were arguing to me anyway.
Intrusion upon seclusion is a subset of a violation of someone’s right to privacy. From the Restatement of the Law, Second, Torts, [(c) 1977, The American Law Institute]:
"652B Intrusion Upon Seclusion
One who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Comments:
a. The form of invasion of privacy covered by this Section does not depend upon any publicity given to the person whose interest is invaded or to his affairs. It consists solely of an intentional interference with his interest in solitude or seclusion, either as to his person or as to his private affairs or concerns, of a kind that would be highly offensive to a reasonable man.
b. The invasion may be by physical intrusion into a place in which the plaintiff has secluded himself, as when the defendant forces his way into the plaintiff’s room in a hotel or insists over the plaintiff’s objection in entering his home. It may also be by the use of the defendant’s senses, with or without mechanical aids, to oversee or overhear the plaintiff’s private affairs, as by looking into his upstairs windows with binoculars or tapping his telephone wires. It may be by some other form of investigation or examination into his private concerns, as by opening his private and personal mail, searching his safe or his wallet, examining his private bank account, or compelling him by a forged court order to permit an inspection of his personal documents. The intrusion itself makes the defendant subject to liability, even though there is no publication or other use of any kind of the photograph or information outlined."
Protests outside where the G8 is meeting would more than likely not be considered “seclusion”, but if the protestors broke into the private meetings, I would think it would fit the charge.
It will help if we keep the two issues separate: the civil suit for damages and the freedom of speech issues. As far as the civil suit goes, a good chunk of the trial was about the damages that the plaintiff (the soldiers’ father) suffered, including:
"He described the severity of his emotional injury, stating that he is often tearful and angry, and that he becomes so sick to his stomach that he actually physically vomits. He testified that Defendants placed a “bug” in his head, such that he is unable to separate thoughts of his son from the [Defendants’] actions: “there are nights that I just, you know, I try to think of my son at times and every time I think of my son or pass his picture hanging on the wall or see the medals hanging on the wall that he received from the [M]arine [C]orps, I see those signs.” He testified also that “I want so badly to remember all the good stuff and so far, I remember the good stuff, but it always turns into the bad.”
Plaintiff also testified as to the permanency of the emotional injury. He testified that “I think about the sign [i.e., Thank God for dead soldiers] every day of my life. . . . I see that sign when I lay in bed at nights. I [had] one chance to bury my son and they took the dignity away from it. I cannot re-bury my son. And for the rest of my life, I will remember what they did to me and it has tarnished the memory of my son’s last hour on earth.” He stated also that “somebody could have stabbed me in the arm or in the back and the wound would have healed. But I don’t think this will heal.”
Throughout trial, Plaintiff demonstrated significant emotion, appearing visibly shaken and distressed, and was often reduced to tears. On occasion during the trial, Plaintiff requested and was granted leave from the courtroom to compose himself. The jury witnessed firsthand Plaintiff’s anguish and the unresolved grief he harbors because of the failure to conduct a normal burial.
Id. at 588-89 (second and third alterations in original) (internal citations omitted).
Snyder called several expert witnesses to testify concerning the injuries the Defendants had caused him, including the worsening of his diabetes and severe depression. Snyder’s treating physician confirmed that the Defendants’ actions had exacerbated Snyder’s depression, thereby preventing him from going through the normal grieving process. See Snyder, 533 F. Supp. 2d at 588. Snyder’s psychologist testified “that the demonstration and the things that [Plaintiff] talked about [seeing] in the website . . . have made the depression worse and lengthened it.” Id."
I tend to agree with you in being leery of “emotional distress” as a recoverable injury, but there are certainly cases where it happens. In this case, I think there is sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that the injuries were suffered and should be recoverable.
As to the freedom of speech issue, it’s a balancing test as to whether the jagoff’s free speech rights should trump the father’s rights and his ability to recover damages. It’s certainly a debateable issue.
Speech that merely carries a different message or makes other speakers feel bad isn’t necessarily disruptive. The question here is whether Phelps is a true disruption – does he actually prevent the funeral from happening? The answer is pretty clearly no.
If he was arrested for disorderly conduct or disrupting a funeral, I woud agree with you. But he wasn’t. He was sued for his actions by the soldier’s father. While there is certainly an issue with whether the jagoff’s First Amendment protections trumps the father’s recovery; it doesn’t necessarily come down to whether or not they disturbed the funeral.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the father’s only real argument is that he is offended by the speech. There’s no reasonable argument to be made. This is political speech after all, which claims the highest degree of protection. And I can’t see any way that the expession of a political opinion can be an outrageous act.
What does it mean to “prevent the funeral from happening”?
In this case, per what people have said here, WBC was not even at this funeral. As such I agree it is protected speech.
That said they definitely have been in sight of other funerals in other cases. Disruption to you is only if they physically prevent the casket going into the ground? Anything less than that is ok by you?