Westboro Baptist Church challenges Nebraska picketing law

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/news/crime/westboro-baptist-church-challenges-nebraska-picketing-law/article_036fb115-a676-5782-b3bc-477d6cc67745.html

POSTED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2015 1:30 AM
By Alissa Skelton / World-Herald staff writer

The Westboro Baptist Church on Tuesday challenged the constitutionality of a Nebraska law requiring pickets to stand 500 feet away from funerals.

Rebekah Phelps-Davis, a church member and picket, testified Tuesday in an Omaha federal courtroom that law enforcement officials discriminatorily applied the Nebraska picketing law based on an officer’s viewpoint in an attempt to suppress the church’s message.

Westboro members have protested for more than 20 years across the United States. Since 2005, the protesters have picketed 46 times in Nebraska, said Phelps-Davis, 54.

The Topeka, Kansas-based church is most well known for condemning homosexuality and contending that natural disasters, terrorist attacks and the deaths of U.S. soldiers are the result of God’s wrath over the United States’ acceptance of homosexuality.

FULL story at link.