What is Our Nation Becoming?

A call for justice: Fallen Marine’s father takes case against funeral protesters to Supreme Court


By Dan Lamothe

dlamothe@militarytimes.com
YORK, Pa. — Albert Snyder’s eyes well up with tears when recalling his son’s funeral. More than 1,200 people packed St. John Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., on March 10, 2006, to pay their respects to 20-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died when his Humvee rolled over in Iraq’s Anbar province while he manned the vehicle’s gun turret.

On the trip from the church to a nearby veterans cemetery, small­town patriotism was on full dis­play. Cars pulled over and allowed the funeral procession to pass. Strangers on the street saluted.

“ I’ve never seen a funeral like this in my life,” Snyder said, his voice wavering. “It was just amaz­ing to see.” The funeral was marred, howev­er, by seven uninvited guests — members of the Westboro Baptist Church flew in from their head­quarters in Topeka, Kan., to picket outside the church service.

Carrying signs reading “Semper F i Fags,” “Thank God for Dead Sol­diers” and “Thank God for IEDs,” the church members infuriated passersby and mourners — just as they have at hundreds of military funerals nationwide.

Led by founder Fred Phelps, the group maintains that God kills U.S. troops as punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexual­ity, greed and abortion.

Snyder just wasn’t going to let the group disparage his fallen warrior. He sued the church.

Four years after his son’s death, the automation equipment sales­man received word that his case will be heard by the Supreme Court in October.

A small team of lawyers repre­senting Snyder will argue that Phelps’ right to free speech does not supersede mourners’ rights to lay their family members to rest without facing an in­sulting public protest.

Snyder is seeking $5 million in emotional and punitive damages from West­boro Baptist and members of the Phelps family, and hopes a legal victory will spare others the tor­ment he and hundreds of other military families have been forced to endure.

“I knew these people were going to be at Matt’s funeral, but in my mind, this day was about Matt, and that’s strictly what it was about,” Sny­der said. “People think that these were seven people who showed up with little signs. There were people flipping them the finger, yelling at them from cars. And this is the way you’re going to bury someone who died for their country?”

Fighting back

Snyder took on the church three months after he buried his son.

On June 5, 2006, Snyder sued the Westboro church for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

His suit charged that a screed posted on one of the church’s Web sites defamed the Snyders. Titled “The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder,” the rant accused his parents of raising their son “for the devil” and of teaching him to commit adultery and divorce and to “support the largest pedophile machine in the history of the entire world, the Roman Catholic monstrosity.” Snyder made the invasion of pri­vacy claim because the Westboro group “intentionally entered upon the solitude and seclusion of the plaintiff and his family members” and “intruded upon the plaintiff’s private affairs and concerns.” Finally, Snyder argued the church meant to harm him and his family emotionally.

Snyder did not ask for a specific amount of money but said the Westboro members should have to pay both emotional damages, his court costs and punitive damages for their “repre­hensible actions.” Snyder was torn over whether to sue the church. He had to endure hours of medical and psychiatric testing, to validate claims he had been harmed by the protests. His doctors later said his diabetes and depression worsened after he found the screed.

“I thought about it and about what they did to me, and how Matt would have felt if somebody had done this to one of his brothers from Iraq,” he said. “And I decided, ‘I’m going to go through with this.’ ” The church sought to quash the lawsuit, arguing during a trial in Baltimore in October 2007 that its members did not intend to cause emotional distress. Their protest was kept 1,000 feet from the church’s doors, they pointed out. They needed to preach to “doomed America” in public places to let it be known the acceptance of homosexuality is wrong, they said. On Oct. 31, 2007, the jury ruled in favor of Snyder, awarding him $10.9 million in damages — enough to effectively bankrupt the 70-member church.

Snyder conducted dozens of media interviews that week, reflecting on the way he had once been pushed around by many people in his life, only to latch on to the church’s actions and stand up for himself.

‘An insult’

The Westboro group immediate­ly appealed the decision, and legal experts and scholars wondered aloud whether the case would stand up before a higher court.

In February 2008, a federal judge in Baltimore reduced the damages to $5 million. The church appealed to the Supreme Court, but the justices declined to hear the case. It then turned to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel for the Vir­ginia-based court overturned the original decision, ruling placards and Internet screed were protect­ed as free speech under the First Amendment.” “As utterly distasteful as these signs are, they involve matters of public concern, including the issue of homosexuals in the military, the sex-abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, and the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens,” Judge Robert King wrote in the court’s opinion.

Snyder struggled with his next step, too.

In an interview, Snyder said bal­ancing the legal battle, media requests and day-to-day life has been costly — both emotionally and financially.

Snyder has about $50,000 in legal bills, even though his attorneys do not charge him for their time. He launched a Web site, www.matthewsnyder.org , to help offset the bills but is “still a long way off” from paying for everything. “I don’t want to take anyone’s free speech away,” Snyder said. “But I don’t want anybody to do anything to the people who gave us that free speech. Too many peo­ple have died to protect it, and for someone to hide behind it and abuse it is an insult.” Legal experts are uncertain how the case will play out. They ques­tion whether the court will rule in favor of Snyder if it means the right to free speech will be limited in any way. Yet the Supreme Court’s will­ingness to take up the case has raised plenty of questions about what it could do.

One possibility is that the court wants to establish a clear definition of the emotional distress tort, a body of laws that address how behavior that results in extreme emotional distress should be handled in the justice system, said Eugene Volokh, an expert on free speech and reli­gious freedom laws at the Universi­ty of California, Los Angeles.

One famous case that addressed emotional distress, Hustler Maga­zine Inc. v. Falwell, is referenced specifically in Snyder’s request to the Supreme Court. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that Jerry Falwell, a nationally known tele­vangelist, could not collect emo­tional damages from the publica­tion for printing a fictional parody that described him having a drunken sexual encounter with his mother in an outhouse.

Since Falwell was a well-known public figure, the burden was on him to prove Hustler specifically meant to cause him harm. Sny­der’s lawyers question whether the same principle should apply to the grieving father of a fallen Marine.

Hard feelings

At the other end of the legal pro­ceedings is the Phelps family, which has challenged state laws limiting picketing at funerals in the past. They are unapologetic for their actions and remain antago­nistic toward the military.

In an interview, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a lawyer and one of the seven picketing outside Lance Cpl. Snyder’s funeral, said the destruc­tion of the world is imminent, and the military won’t be able to save it. In fact, she says service mem­bers will turn into cowards.

“At the front of the pack is going to be those military brutes,” she said. “They’re young and strong and can outrun the rest of the rebels. And they’re [not] going to give a hoot” about everyone else.

She then took a direct swipe at Marines: “It ain’t going to be about the badass Marine because first, they’re not badass. They think they’re badass. If they’re so badass, how come they keep getting killed?” The Westboro group cannot pick­et every funeral because of its small number so it “relies on God” for guidance, she said. Each month, the members announce the events they plan to picket and change their schedule if another event with a higher profile presents itself.

One example: In February, Phelps family members decided to picket for three days outside a conference in Southern Virginia held by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a Defense Department organization launched to develop technology and tactics to defeat roadside bombs. But they pulled away when they realized they could picket outside the John­stown, Pa., funeral of Rep. John Murtha, D.-Pa., a former Marine.

“We said instead of going back over to the JIEDDO conference, we’ll kick that piece to the curb and instead picket Murtha, because he, after all, is a dead sol­dier,” Phelps-Roper said.

Snyder acknowledges the police kept the Phelpses at a distance at his son’s funeral and he didn’t see their placards until he turned on the television later.

Nonetheless, he said, the Phelpses’ actions forced him to worry about what his daughters might see when he should have been allowed to simply mourn and observe the loss of his son.

“They’re really just sick people,” Snyder said of the Phelps family. “They came to my church. I didn’t go to theirs. They came from Kansas with a specific purpose, and that was to get their message out. And they didn’t care who it hurt.” □