103076P.pdf   04/26/2013  Shirley Phelps-Roper  v.  Chris Koster
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  10-3076
   U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City   
   [PUBLISHED] [Bye, Author, with Wollman and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
   Civil case - Funeral Protests. Plaintiff's speech at funerals, while
   repugnant to some listeners, is entitled to constitutional protection; since
   the plaintiff established that she engages in First Amendment expressive
   conduct protected by the First Amendment, the district court properly
   placed the burden of proof on the State as the proponent of the funeral
   protest laws which restricted plaintiff's right to engage in the conduct;
   given the en banc court's decision in Phelps-Roper v. City of Manchester,
   Mo., 697 F.3d (8th Cir. 2012), Missouri has shown a significant
   government interest in protecting the peace and privacy of funeral
   attendees for a short time and in a limited space; the failure, however, to
   define the spatial extent of the buffer zone in Missouri Rev. Stat. Sec.
   578.501 resulted in the statue burdening substantially more speech than is
   necessary to serve Missouri's interests and prevents the section from
   being narrowly tailored; both Sec. 578.501 and 578.502 use the word
   "processions" in their definition of a funeral, and the use of this word
   creates a "floating zone," giving both sections impermissibly broad reach;
   however, severing the word from the statutory sections, results in a three-
   hundred-foot buffer zone in Section 578.502, and, with the word severed,
   this statutory section is constitutional since it is narrowly tailored and
   leaves open ample alternative channels for communication of plaintiff's
   message; elimination of the word from Section 578.501 does not solve
   the remaining constitutional problems for that section, and the district
   court did not err in finding it unconstitutional.