Federal Judges, Free Speech, John Paul Stevens, Quote of the Day, Samuel Alito, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Quote of the Day: Westboro Baptist Makes for Strange Bedfellows

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It might interest you to know that if I were still an active justice, I would have joined [Justice Alito’s] powerful dissent in the recent case holding that the intentional infliction of severe emotional harm is constitutionally protected speech. The case… involved a verbal assault on the private citizens attending the funeral of their son — a Marine corporal killed in Iraq. To borrow Sam’s phrase, the First Amendment does not transform solemn occasions like funerals into ‘free-fire zones.’

— Justice John Paul Stevens, in a recent speech to the Federal Bar Council in New York City, explaining how he would have voted with Justice Samuel Alito in Snyder v. Phelps (aka the Westboro Baptist Church case).

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