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Kansas Church to Fight Mo. Law in Court

Posted on: Saturday, 22 July 2006, 00:00 CDT

By GARANCE BURKE

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals across the nation filed suit in federal court Friday, claiming a Missouri law banning such picketing infringed on religious freedom and free speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by showing up at soldiers' funerals with anti-homosexual signs.

The church and the Rev. Fred Phelps claim God is allowing soldiers, coal miners and others to be killed because the United States tolerates homosexuals.

Missouri lawmakers were spurred to action after the church protested in St. Joseph last August, at the funeral of Army Spc. Edward Myers.

The law bans picketing and protests "in front of or about" any location where a funeral is held, from an hour before it begins until an hour after it ends. It makes it a violation a misdemeanor, with fines and possible jail time that increase for repeat offenders.

A number of other state laws and a federal law, signed in May by President Bush, bar such protests within a certain distance from a cemetery or funeral.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU claims the wording of Missouri's ban seeks to limit the group's free speech based on the content of their message. They are asking the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and to issue an injunction to keep it from being enforced, which would allow the group to resume picketing.

"I told the nation as each state went after these laws that if the day came that they got in our way, that we would sue them," said Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for the Topeka, Kan.-based church. "At this hour, the wrath of God is pouring out on this country."

Scott Holste, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, said, "We're not going to acquiesce to anything that they're asking for in this lawsuit."

The suit names Nixon, Gov. Matt Blunt and others as defendants.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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