Richard Wolf

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to protesting against the president, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, free speech has its limits.

It took nearly 10 years, including three presidential elections, for the court to write the final chapter in a saga that began outside President George W. Bush's Oregon hotel in the waning days of his 2004 re-election campaign.

The justices ruled unanimously that the Secret Service acted appropriately when it moved anti-Bush protesters several blocks further away from the president's dinner table, even while allowing a friendly crowd of demonstrators to hold their ground.

"People are not at liberty to speak whenever, however, and wherever they please," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled for the court. "In that regard, we have recognized that securing the safety of the president is a vital concern."

It was the second decision rendered against protesters from a court that usually errs on the side of free speech. Earlier this year, the justices said military base commanders had the right to remove protesters for cause from designated demonstration zones.

On the other hand, some of the biggest cases of the term have upheld First Amendment rights. The court equated campaign donations with speech in striking down the aggregate limits that wealthy donors can contribute, and it allowed government meetings to open with a prayer even when nearly all the clergy are Christian.

Still to come are cases concerning protests outside abortion clinics, false statements in campaign advertising, and the rights of employers to claim religious exemptions from government regulations.

The decision in the Bush protest case essentially boiled down to one salient fact: presidents must be protected at all costs. "There are people out there who want to kill the president," Chief Justice John Roberts said during oral arguments in March.

Anti-Bush protesters had spent the better part of a decade pursuing their legal challenge against two Secret Service agents who ordered police to move them farther away than Bush's supporters during the Oregon trip. They claimed they were moved simply because their chants were annoying the president during dinner.

Lower courts sided with the protesters, ruling that the actions were a form of unconstitutional "viewpoint discrimination." Steven Wilker, the lawyer for the protesters, cited a dozen other incidents in which Secret Service agents allegedly took similar actions during Bush's first term.

Even if that was the case, most of the justices said during oral arguments, the potential that security concerns played a role gave the agents the benefit of the doubt and made a free-speech challenge almost impossible to succeed.

Ginsburg also pointed out that the Bush supporters were further away from the president than the opponents and did not need to be moved, whereas the opponents' location posed a potential threat.

"When the president reached the patio to dine, the protesters, but not the supporters, were within weapons range of his location," Ginsburg said. "Given that situation, the protesters cannot plausibly urge that the agents had no valid security reason to request or order their eviction."