Getting your player ready...
RICHMOND, Va. — A federal appeals court on Thursday tossed out a $5 million verdict against protesters who carried signs with inflammatory messages such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” outside the Maryland funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs carried by members of Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas contained “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be read as factual assertions about an individual.
