Kansas City, USA - A federal judge has rejected arguments from Westboro Baptist Church that would have forced Missouri to allow protests at military funerals.
A member of the Topeka church had asked the court to declare Missouri’s ban on the protests unconstitutional. The ban came in response to the church’s protests at military funerals. Church members say that the deaths of American servicemen and servicewomen are God’s way of punishing a nation that tolerates homosexuality.
Church member Shirley Phelps-Roper filed the lawsuit last year, claiming that the ban violated her right of free speech. She also sought injunctions that would have prevented Attorney General Jay Nixon and Gov. Matt Blunt from enforcing the law.
In his order Friday, U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan Jr. said that Phelps-Roper had not met the court’s standards for issuing such a decree. Gaitan did not rule on Phelps-Roper’s other claims, but he said the state’s defense of the ban relied on good arguments that could be pursued in a trial.
Gaitan said Phelps-Roper had not shown that protesters would suffer irreparable harm without the decree.
Missouri’s law bans picketing and protests “in front of or about” any location where a funeral is held, from an hour before the funeral begins until an hour after it ends. Several other states and the federal government have adopted similar restrictions in response to the protests by members of Phelps-Roper’s church.
Gaitan noted that pickets still are allowed at times and places other than those that the state prohibits and that they could use other means to convey their message.
Nixon issued a statement saying he was “gratified that Judge Gaitan has agreed with us that this law can be enforced.”
“There has to be a line drawn and enforced against hate, particularly when that hate victimizes the families of those who sacrificed their lives for their country,” Nixon said.
Phelps-Roper, a lawyer, told The Associated Press on Friday that she had not seen Gaitan’s order.
“We’ve been in and out of Missouri since this lawsuit was filed, and the Lord God is smacking Missouri around in so many ways,” she said.