Outpouring of support for Marine's dad suing funeral protesters

BALTIMORE — Outraged that the father of a dead Marine was ordered to pay a portion of court costs incurred by a group he had sued for picketing his son's funeral, a grass-roots fundraising effort has been launched to help the grieving family.

"I was appalled," Sally Giannini, 72, a retired bookkeeper from Spokane, said of the court decision against Albert Snyder. "I believe in free speech, but this goes too far."

Living on a fixed income, Giannini said she could send only $10 toward the $16,510.80 that the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Snyder to pay to Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., an anti-gay group that pickets military funerals across the country. The group says military deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Snyder sued Westboro because its members waved signs saying "God hates ... " — using a slur for homosexuals — and "God hates the USA" at the 2006 funeral in Westminster, Md., of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq. A federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder $11 million in damages in 2007, saying Phelps' group intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the family. The award was reduced to $5 million, then overturned on appeal.

As news of the order to pay court costs spread through the news media and online, strangers were moved to send money and set up funds to support Snyder's court battle. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly offered Tuesday night to pay the court costs owed by Snyder.

Mark Seavey, new-media director for the American Legion, posted a message Tuesday on his blog, The Burn Pit, urging readers to donate to the Albert Snyder Fund. That message was picked up by conservative political blogger Michelle Malkin, who called Westboro protesters "evil miscreants."

"Regardless of how you feel about the merits of the Snyders' suit, the Snyders deserve to know that Americans are forever grateful for their son's heroism and for the family's sacrifice," Malkin wrote. "We shouldn't stand by and watch them bankrupted."

Money from donations will go toward covering the money owed to Phelps and toward further appeals, Seavey said.

"As soon as we heard this," he said, "we just knew that it was going to go through the roof, and people were going to be upset. ... We're going to do the best we can to make sure that Mr. Snyder doesn't have to deal with this. We're going to make sure he doesn't have to pay a red cent."

Snyder said Tuesday he was "exhausted" by the legal ordeal but heartened by the outpouring of support. He had received about 3,000 e-mails from people who planned to contribute.

"It kind of restores your faith in mankind after dealing with this wacko church," Snyder said. "Win or lose, I'll know that I did everything I could for Matt, and for all the soldiers and Marines who are still coming home dying."

From Web sites to Twitter pages, people were galled that the grieving father of a fallen Marine would have to pay a group that uses such inflammatory tactics. A Facebook group called "I support Al Snyder in His fight against Westboro Baptist Church" had drawn more than 60,000 members by Wednesday evening.

The 4th Circuit Court in September threw out a Baltimore jury's award to Snyder on free-speech grounds. Westboro a month later filed a motion to recoup court costs from both the original suit and the appeal, for a total of $96,740.21. The court's judgment Friday covers a portion of those costs.

The Supreme Court agreed in early March to hear a new appeal of the case, which experts say is being watched closely by First Amendment advocates. If the Supreme Court sides with Snyder, he won't have to pay Westboro.

"The most alarming part is that [the 4th Circuit] sat on it for months, and only ruled on it after the Supreme Court agreed to hear it," said Sean Summers, Snyder's York, Pa.-based lawyer. "The other troubling fact was that we were trying to raise about $20,000 to file a Supreme Court brief. Now we have [to raise] another $16,500. ... There are definitely extenuating circumstances, given that Mr. Snyder doesn't have the resources to pay."

Snyder, who lives in York, earns $43,000 a year as an in-house salesman for a small electronics firm.

Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn., predicted that the Supreme Court will not address issues of where protesters are permitted to demonstrate, as it has in the case of abortion protesters. Instead, he said, Snyder's case is important because "it has the potential to define whether we're going to create a new exemption to freedom of speech that is emotionally distressing."

For some, the issue is not so much the right to free speech as the right to a peaceful burial of fallen troops.

"I agree that people have the right to free speech," said Alice Johnson, a member of the Patriot Guard Riders, which sends supporters to troops' funerals to shield the families from protesters, "but that should not be allowed ... where people are laying their children to rest who died for their country."