Curtailing a Disruptive Act

Over the past six weeks, the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) has gotten involved in almost 20 cases involving the disruption of funerals of our military men and women.  A protest group has conducted a nationwide campaign protesting at the funerals and memorial services of fallen American heroes.  Families and friends of fallen United States military personnel should be able to lay their loved ones to rest and memorialize their heroic lives, free from disruptive demonstrations which invade their right to privacy, worsen the profound emotional suffering that accompanies bereavement, and cause public disorder. 

While we at the ACLJ actively defend the free speech rights of hundreds of individuals and groups in state and federal courts across the country, the ACLJ is also committed to the basic principle of law that the First Amendment does not give citizens a blank check to say whatever they want, however they want, wherever they wantespecially when the rights of others are violated.  As the Supreme Court recognized in the famous United States v. Graces case, We have regularly rejected the assertion that people who wish 'to propagandize protests or views have a constitutional right to do so whenever and however and wherever they please. 

The First Amendment right to express unpopular viewpoints does not include the right to target a captive audience with speech calculated to inflict psychological distress.  In any number of different settings, the message of these protestors would be protected under the First Amendments Free Speech Clause.  In the context of funerals for American military personnel, however, these protests are a grotesque intrusion on the privacy rights of bereaved families and an insult to the memories of those who gave the last full measure of devotion. 

The protest groups incendiary signs waved at the grieving family and friends of fallen American military personnel are the epitome of what the courts have called fighting words.  The protest groups modus operandi is to disrupt the funeral of fallen servicemen with protests proclaiming jubilation over the persons death and mockery of the mourners.  The protestors routinely carry signs saying, Thank God for dead soldiers, God hates your tears, Thank God for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), Thank God for September 11^th, and other similarly disruptive statements.  In our view, the protestors are not entitled to First Amendment protection because, in the funeral context, their content embodies a particularly intolerable and, in our view, socially unnecessary mode of expression.  As the courts have also recognized, Resorts to epitaphs or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinions safeguarded by the Constitution.  In essence, the signs of these protestors constitute fighting words which are directed against individuals to provoke violence or inflict injury.  They are the lowest order of communication. 

The men and women who have died overseas defending freedom have fought for all of us.  We should now fight for their dignity!