UF First Amendment project files brief with U.S. Supreme Court in funeral protest case
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida’s Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project joined three other free speech groups to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last week.
They filed it as part of Snyder v. Phelps, a free speech case centering on military funeral protests by members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan.
“The Snyder case pits the First Amendment right to engage in controversial, offensive and even abhorrent expression against a grieving father’s ability to sue over that same speech because it allegedly causes him emotional suffering and allegedly invades his privacy rights outside of a funeral ceremony,” said Clay Calvert, director of the UF project.
Oral argument in the case will take place this fall in Washington, D.C.
“Free speech is not always pretty or nice,” Calvert said, “but it is important to defend, lest courts start carving away exceptions for expression that people find offensive or disagreeable.”
This is the third friend-of-the-court brief that Calvert and the project have filed this year.
Joining the project in the brief are the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Pennsylvania Center of the First Amendment at Pennsylvania State University,
The project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to current and contemporary issues affecting the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, thought, assembly and petition. It’s part of the UF College of Journalism and Communications, a national leader in the professional education of future journalists and other communication practitioners.