Should the First Amendment have limits?

According to an article, “Judge tosses out law banning protests on Supreme Court plaza,” found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/judge-tosses-out-law-banning-protests-on-supreme-court-plaza/2013/06/12/b0dec308-d392-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html, a Federal court judge, in 2013, dismissed a law banning protests on the Supreme Court plaza. Judge Beryl A. Howell felt passionate enough to write a 68 page opinion regarding the law, first implemented in 1949. “It cannot possibly be consistent with the First Amendment for the government to so broadly prohibit expression in virtually any form in front of a courthouse, even the Supreme Court,” Howell wrote in the opinion.

This issue has since resurfaced when Supreme Court marshal Pamela Talkin appealed the decision.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/for-supreme-court-first-amendment-sometimes-has-a-limit-its-doorstep.html The case at question is from 2011, involving Harold H. Hodge Jr. a student arrested in Maryland for holding a sign that read “U.S. Gov. Allows Police to Illegally Murder and Brutalize African Americans and Hispanic People” on the Supreme Court plaza. The 1983 case United States v. Grace addressed the 1949 law. The decision proclaimed that protests could not be banned on the public sidewalks surrounding the court house. However, it is evident that there has been a change of heart regarding the plaza, a mere few feet from the sidewalk. Talkin’s primary argument is that, “Demonstrations outside courthouses might give rise to actual or apparent efforts to subject judicial officers to improper influence.” The article continues and notes the irony of the situation. The Supreme Court is not practicing what it preaches. 

This discussion is similar to cases studied in class. The First Amendment protects groups such as Westboro Baptist Church when they protest the funerals of dead soldiers. The First Amendment also protects protesters outside an abortion clinic. I do not understand why the First Amendment would not protect protestors on the Supreme Court Plaza, especially because Talkin's reasoning that the protestors may influence the justices is nonsense. Hodge Jr.’s sign does not pose an imminent threat and should be protected by the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court is going to protect outrageous groups such as Westboro Baptist Church they should not be permitted to prohibit other protestors from utilizing their constitutional rights.