WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Friday that homeless people can be arrested and fined for sleeping in public places, overturning a lower court ruling that found banning camping when there is no shelter is cruel and unusual punishment.
The 6-3 decision was the Supreme Court’s most significant on the issue in decades.
This comes as the number of Americans without permanent housing reaches record highs and Democratic and Republican leaders express frustration that a 2018 lower court ruling has limited their ability to address homeless camps that pose health and public safety threats.
“The Court cannot hold that the punishment imposed by Grants Pass was cruel and unusual,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion, referring to the small Oregon municipality at the center of the case.
“The city will impose limited fines for first-time offenders, issue temporary bans on camping in public parks for repeat offenders, and only impose up to 30 days in jail for those who subsequently violate the orders.”
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Cruel and unusual punishment?
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, representing the court’s liberal minority, said the law essentially criminalizes the act of sleeping around.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “For some people, sleeping outdoors is their only option.”
Sotomayor noted that in Grants Pass, people can be jailed or fined for simply sleeping in a public place, like their car, using a blanket to stay warm, or using a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. “For people without shelter, this is a punishment for being homeless,” Sotomayor wrote. “This is unjust and unconstitutional.”
Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the decision “gives free rein to local officials who prefer pointless and costly arrests and incarceration rather than providing a real solution.”
“This strategy has consistently failed to reduce homelessness in the past,” Oliva said, “and it will certainly fail to reduce homelessness in the future.”
“Emergency relief” for local communities
Grants Pass Executive Director Thean Evangelis said the decision “provides urgent relief to many communities that have been struggling to address the growing problem of unsafe encampments.”
“For the past six years, decisions from the Ninth Circuit have tied local governments’ hands,” Evangelis said. “The Supreme Court has now restored the ability for cities on the front lines of this crisis to develop lasting solutions that meet the needs of the most vulnerable in their communities while also keeping public spaces safe and clean.”
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine Western states, ruled in 2018 that bans on camping in areas with insufficient shelter beds constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court refrained from ruling on the Boise, Idaho, case at the time, but is taking up the issue this term after that precedent was used to challenge anti-camping rules in Grants Pass.
Homeless residents in the southern Oregon city of 38,000 could face a minimum fine of $250 and potential jail time for repeat offenses.
Criminalizing homelessness in a city without homeless shelters
Homeless advocates said the rule is tantamount to criminalizing people who don’t have a place to live.. The city is lacking affordable housing, and the only shelter for adults requires daily Christian service attendance and other rules, leaving hundreds of residents without a place to live.
“We don’t want to be in the park,” said Helen Crews, a Grants Pass resident without a permanent home. “We want a place to live.”
City officials said that without the Supreme Court’s intervention, they would be forced to vacate public space.
The Justice Department largely sided with the plaintiffs, arguing the appeals court’s ruling was too broad and did not take into account individual circumstances, such as whether shelter was available but was denied.
According to the federal government, more than 600,000 people may be homeless on any given night in the United States. Last year, 40% of homeless people were sleeping under bridges, on sidewalks, in parks, in cars, abandoned buildings, or other public spaces.
The case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, attracted an unusually large number of briefs from outside interests.
Homeless advocates hope that even if the ruling doesn’t go their way, the case will spur elected officials at all levels of government to do more to address homelessness.