A little background of Fred Phelps may be in order:
He is does not qualify as your typical right wing God fearing radical conservative.
"Phelps is a disbarred lawyer, founder of the Phelps Chartered law firm and former candidate for political office, and was a civil rights activist in Kansas.
Phelps took cases on behalf of African American clients alleging racial discrimination by school systems.
Phelps Chartered(His law firm) also won one of the first reverse discrimination cases.
Phelps has run in various Kansas Democratic Party primaries five times, but has never won. These included races for governor in 1990, 1994, and 1998, receiving about 15 percent of the vote in 1998.[57] In the 1992 Democratic Party primary for U.S. Senate, Phelps received 31 percent of the vote.[58] Phelps ran for mayor of Topeka in 1993[59] and 1997." wikipedia
Phelps is a scammer and because of his education, he is well versed in "gaming" the system. To get an overview of how disgusting and obnoxious he is browse the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps
You will also find he hates the Irish, Swedes, & Canadians. (Not me, him:lol
Not sure if he likes anyone.
He has been banned from the UK.
But of course the ACLU loves him.
"The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Missouri on behalf of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church to overturn the ban on the picketing of soldier's funerals.[104] The ACLU of Ohio also filed a similar lawsuit.";-)
In short trying to limit Free Speech in the US is very difficult, and Fred Phelps as an ex civil rights lawyer knows how to abuse it.
Even with the current upcoming Supreme Court decision Fred Phelps will not stop, whether he wins or loses. He will just modify his behavior to skirt the existing laws.
Here is information from the law suit limiting defamation damages against Phelps
"The high court won’t hear Snyder’s defamation charge. A lower court threw that out, essentially saying that Phelps and Co. propagate such outlandish claims that no one with any common sense would believe them anyway."