The Court has modified fighting words doctrine since Chaplinsky, (in Termineillo, Street, Cohen, and Gooding) and the current doctrine basically requires that "fighting words" be:
1) speech (print does not qualify) 2) delivered face to face (not across the street, not ten feet away) 3) directed at a specific person (general statements of opinion don't qualify) 4) inflicts injury or tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace by its very utterance (reasonable person standard)
So as it currently stands, almost certainly will continue to stand, a funeral protest does not qualify as "fighting words".
Do you think this judge made the correct ruling?
But I'm sure the courts will come up with an entirely different standard for speech that offends and incites Muslims.
I don't entirely agree with the ruling. What is "face-to-face?" Is it someone placing their face 12 inches from yours? 2 feet? 5 feet? IMHO, the totality of the circumstances have to be considered.
IMHO, 10 feet away, or even on the other side of the road, is quite sufficient to be "fighting words" if the other characteristics apply in the situation. If these idiots are yelling at you from across the road that "your son/daughter/husband/wife" who was killed in Iraq for example or murdered in a school shooting by a madman is "going to Hell" or "burning in Hell" or something similar, then I'd consider that a sufficient provocation. I don't know what I'd actually do in such a situation (and I hope that I never need to find out), but I can tell you that if I was on a jury I'd not vote to find someone who responded to such a provocation to be guilty of anything but being a reasonable human being.