Showing posts with label Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Court. Show all posts
WASHINGTON - Emboldened by Wednesday's Supreme Court decision, Westboro Baptist Church attorney Margie Phelps said she will challenge statutes all over the country that restrict picketing at funerals.
The court decided 8-1, with Justice Samuel Alito dissenting, that the First Amendment protected Westboro and the Phelps family from the lawsuit brought by Albert Snyder. The Phelpses picketed the 2006 Westminster, Md., funeral of Snyder's son, causing him emotional distress.
Phelps said it was ironic that the case that allowed her to argue in front of the nation's highest court came out of Maryland.
"The one law that might be good, of all these laws across the land -- wait for it -- is Maryland," she said. "I'm not totally throwing in the towel, and it was wrongly conceived, but it's (only) 100 feet. So if there is one that's got a fighting chance of staying good, that would be the one."
Maryland's picketing law requires protesters to remain at least 100 feet away from any funeral or funeral procession.
Phelps said she already has challenges pending against Nebraska and Missouri laws that are more restrictive.
Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, died at age 20 in a Humvee accident in Iraq. Westboro founder Fred Phelps and five of his followers used his funeral as an opportunity to spread their anti-gay message with signs like "God Hates America" and "Fags Doom Nations."
Matthew Snyder was not gay, but Westboro has picketed hundreds of military funerals across the nation, claiming that soldiers' deaths are God's vengeance for the country's tolerance of homosexuality.
In response, 43 states and the federal government have enacted laws that restrict picketing at funerals -- laws that Margie Phelps said are largely unconstitutional based on three legal principles she sees in the Supreme Court's decision: Funeral attendees are not a "captive audience," the Phelps' protests amount to "public issue speech," and speech does not disrupt a funeral service.
"When all these laws get passed they pretend like there's some basis under the captive audience doctrine to put us 500, 1,000, 1,500 feet away," Phelps said. "That's totally debunked in that (Supreme Court) opinion."
Washington, D.C., lawyer Gene Schaerr disagreed.
Schaerr wrote an amicus brief in support of Snyder for the American Legion. He said the Supreme Court "went out of its way" to tell lower courts that the decision did not mean they should stop enforcing anti-picketing statutes, pointing to a passage from Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion that reads, "To the extent these laws are content-neutral, they raise very different questions from the tort verdict at issue in this case. Maryland's law, however, was not in effect at the time of the events at issue here, so we have no occasion to consider how it might apply to facts such as those before us, or whether it or other similar regulations are constitutional.
Schaerr said the court has long upheld reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech.
"I think they're going to have a very difficult time getting them overturned," Schaerr said of the Phelpses. "What they had going for them here, obviously, was a jury verdict that directly targeted their speech and would have punished them for their speech. But when you're dealing with a time, place and manner restriction, that's a completely different animal. Those statutes don't target any one person."
"He lost; I won," Margie Phelps said when told of Schaerr's interpretation of the decision.
She also questioned his credentials on First Amendment issues.
"He doesn't labor in this vineyard, by the way, he labors in the vineyard of worshipping dead soldiers," she said. "He doesn't labor in the vineyard of keeping a dissenting voice alive on your mean streets. He doesn't have a clue what those issues are. Not a clue."
Schaerr has served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia and associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush. He works for the international firm of Winston and Strawn, where he is the chairman of the firm's nationwide appellate, critical motions and litigation constitutionality practice.
Raquel Guillory, spokeswoman for the Maryland's attorney general's office, said Wednesday that the court's decision did not affect the state's anti-picketing law and that it would continue to be enforced.
Capital News Service contributed to this report.
Print Email Share Comments Recommend View ArticleLeave a CommentSort: NewestSort: Oldest Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View ArticleView All Comments Latest Politics Videos March 04, 2011Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:06:14 GMT6:03 PM EST
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – An American detained for visa violations in northwest Pakistan is a contractor who had worked on a U.S.-funded construction project in the region, a security official said Saturday.
Pakistan's intelligence agency says it is scrutinizing the details of Americans in the country after the arrest last month of a CIA employee for shooting dead two Pakistanis in the eastern city of Lahore, but it was unclear whether the arrest of Aaron Mark DeHaven in Peshawar on Friday was directly related.
The killings in Lahore have sharply raised tensions between Pakistan's spy agency and the CIA, which cooperate behind the scenes in the fight against Islamist militant groups inside Pakistan. The shootings have also unleashed a new round of anti-American rhetoric in the country.
On Saturday, more than 300 Islamists from the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, which has militant links, rallied in Lahore, urging the government to hang the detained CIA contractor, Raymond Allen Davis.
"Expel all the CIA agents," said Amir Hamza, a leader of the charity.
The rally came hours after DeHaven appeared in court in Peshawar, and a judge ordered he remain in custody for 14 more days while police investigate him.
The security official said DeHaven was a contractor who had worked on at least one construction contract for the U.S. government in the region, declining to give more details.
He said DeHaven is a 34-year-old from Virginia who is married to a Pakistani woman. The official asked that his name not be published because of the sensitivity of the case.
DeHaven's application form for a work visa says he works for Catalyst Services.
The company's website says it performs logistics, "life support" and construction services around the world and lists contact numbers in Pakistan, Dubai and Afghanistan.
It says its management teams have U.S. Army or Defense Department backgrounds.
The United States makes extensive use of contractors to implement its billion-dollar aid and military projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. Embassy said it had seen media reports about the arrest and was trying to arrange consular access to DeHaven.
Print Email Share Comments Recommend View ArticleLeave a CommentSort: NewestSort: Oldest Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View ArticleView All Comments Latest Videos February 26, 2011Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:21:53 GMT4:02 PM EST
The next wave of Al Qaeda recruits are born or educated right in the United States. Most are just old enough to remember 9/11, yet a decade a later they are turning their back on the United States.
The threat posed by this new generation of terrorists was underscored this week by the case of Khalid Aldawsari, a 20-year-old Saudi national who came to the United States legally in 2008 to attend college in Texas. Now he is accused of plotting to bomb a series of U.S. targets, including the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush.
What is striking about the Aldawsari case is that he wasn't arrested in an FBI sting operation. Law enforcement sources were quick to point out that a central tip came from a chemical supplier who said he was suspicious about the amount of phenol Aldawsari wanted to buy.
Authorities allege that Aldawsari was a
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