Phelps-Roper v. Koster, et al, No. 10-3076 (8th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, Shirley Phelps-Roper, brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the State of Missouri after Missouri passed funeral protest laws Mo. Rev. Stat. 578.501 and Mo. Rev. Stat. 578.502. The district court entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the statutes following this court's decision in Phelps-Roper v. Nixon. The district court later declared both statutes unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and granted Phelps-Roper's motion for summary judgment. Nixon has since been abrogated by the court's recent en banc decision in Phelps-Roper v. City of Manchester, Mo. The court affirmed the district court's judgment to the extent the district court held that section 578.501 violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment; reversed the district court's judgment to the extent it held that section 578.502 was unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause, severed the term "processions" from section 578.502(3), and held that the remaining provisions of section 578.502 were narrowly tailored time, place, and manner restrictions; and remanded for the district court to address in the first instance Phelps-Roper's alternative challenges that section 578.502 violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and Missouri statutory and constitutional law.
Court Description: Civil case - Funeral Protests. Plaintiff's speech at funerals, while repugnant to some listeners, is entitled to constitutional protection; since the plaintiff established that she engages in First Amendment expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment, the district court properly placed the burden of proof on the State as the proponent of the funeral protest laws which restricted plaintiff's right to engage in the conduct; given the en banc court's decision in Phelps-Roper v. City of Manchester, Mo., 697 F.3d (8th Cir. 2012), Missouri has shown a significant government interest in protecting the peace and privacy of funeral attendees for a short time and in a limited space; the failure, however, to define the spatial extent of the buffer zone in Missouri Rev. Stat. Sec. 578.501 resulted in the statue burdening substantially more speech than is necessary to serve Missouri's interests and prevents the section from being narrowly tailored; both Sec. 578.501 and 578.502 use the word "processions" in their definition of a funeral, and the use of this word creates a "floating zone," giving both sections impermissibly broad reach; however, severing the word from the statutory sections, results in a three- hundred-foot buffer zone in Section 578.502, and, with the word severed, this statutory section is constitutional since it is narrowly tailored and leaves open ample alternative channels for communication of plaintiff's message; elimination of the word from Section 578.501 does not solve the remaining constitutional problems for that section, and the district court did not err in finding it unconstitutional.
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