Kansas Ban on Funeral Protests Blocked

By DAVID KLEPPER
The Star’s Topeka correspondent

TOPEKA | Kansas lawmakers must try yet again to pass a law prohibiting funeral protests, now that the state’s Supreme Court has ruled it cannot be enforced.

The decision leaves last year’s funeral picketing ban in legal limbo: It remains on the books, but cannot be enforced until the Legislature takes action.

Lawmakers will waste little time, said Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt.

In fact, a House committee introduced a bill Tuesday that would do just that.

Like those passed in Missouri and at least 35 other states, the Kansas protest ban was written to rein in the activities of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church, which is headed by Fred Phelps.

Members of the church protest funerals of fallen soldiers and others across the country, saying their deaths are divine retribution for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a Westboro leader and a lawyer, said she was pleased by the court’s decision. She said the court cannot allow itself to become an advisory panel to the Legislature.

“They need to stop climbing on our backs to make political hay,” she said.

Phelps-Roper said continual legislative failures to pass a workable ban in Kansas are “embarrassing all of us in the state.”

Asked for a response, Kansas Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt threw back his head and laughed.

“You can report loud peals of laughter as I considered the irony of that statement,” he said.

Westboro is challenging a $5 million award given to a Pennsylvania man who successfully sued the church for invasion of privacy after members protested the funeral of his son, a Marine.

A jury initially suggested an $11 million verdict, but a judge later reduced it.

The church is also embroiled in a federal court case in Missouri.