While I abhor the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church, I consider verdicts such as this one monstrous violations of free speech rights. I am not making a constitutional claim here, but rather a normative one. Individuals have, or ought to have, an almost absolute right to protest the policies of the government. That is precisely what the Westboro Baptist Church was doing here: it was protesting the policies of the government with regard to homosexuality, and was claiming that the death of American soldiers was a consequence of those policies. However outlandish and absurd the claim may seem, it is not the government's place to regulate it, whether through legislation or through the court system.
Protesting a government policy and protesting an individual who has nothing to do with creating said policy are two different things though. Westboro is targetting private families, and therefore it can be considered harassment, assault, etc (whatever little personal grievance that can be brought up in court) while not being a first amendment case. This is why Westboro lost. Right?
