The Phelps Farce

A few weeks ago, Gov. Vilsack signed a law banning protests within a certain distance at funerals. This was part of a wave of laws signed by Governors in response to the Phelps family protests at military funerals. Estimating that they did not get enough media exposure from loudly proclaiming that "God hates fags" at services for "known or suspected" gay persons, the incestual "church" of topeka, KS, decided to target military funerals.
Today, the President used the Memorial Day holiday to sign a federal analogue of this bill that sailed through Congress virtually unopposed. In today's NPR coverage, the ACLU voiced their predictable opposition, and a law professor chimed in, agreeing that the law would likely be struck down on First Amendment grounds.
Should it be? I haven't taken Con Law II, so I can't speak authoritatively on the subject (as if I could had I taken the class!!), but it seems to me that this is far from a legal certainty. In fact, I think the aforementioned law professor is articulating a policy choice no more likely to sway courts than the policy supporting the bill. To survive a 1st Amd. challenge, there must be, among other tests, a compelling government interest supporting the statute. If there is ONE thing I have learned in Con Law, it is that these are entirely meaningless concepts. On a case of first impression, the court will create a vision of "compelling" that conforms to its previously-held ideological intuition. I might reason that the government indeed has a compelling interest in banning these protests because the symbolic nature of military funerals--as evidenced by public monetary support, the state-sanctioned presence of an honor guard, etc--is an important and over-riding public policy. I might argue that this is only a time/place/manner restriction that allows this statute an exemption from "compelling interest" scrutiny. Maybe I'd be even more creative if I were an actual lawyer :)
Point is...send those fuckers back to Kansas.