The Supreme Court ruled Friday that cities in California and the West can enforce laws that restrict homeless encampments on sidewalks and other public property.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices disagreed with San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court and ruled that it is not “cruel and unusual” punishment for city officials to ban homeless people from sleeping on the streets or in parks.
“Homelessness is complex,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Its causes are many. So can the public policy responses necessary to address it. At its core, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment gives federal judges the primary responsibility for evaluating those cases and crafting those responses. It is not like this.”
Gorsuch said the Eighth Amendment “does not authorize federal judges to take away those rights and responsibilities from the American people and instead dictate this nation's homelessness policy.”
He was joined by the other conservative justices, while the three liberal justices dissented.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissenting opinion. “For some people, sleeping rough is their only option. For people who don't have access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unacceptable and unconstitutional. Punishing people for their condition is “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment.”
The ruling is a major victory for West Side city officials and a setback for homeless rights advocates. Since 2018, advocates had won rulings from the 9th Circuit that it was unconstitutional to enforce anti-camping laws against people who were homeless and had nowhere to sleep.
Many city officials said those decisions led to the growth of tent encampments in Los Angeles and most West Coast cities. They joined an Oregon city's appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to clarify its authority over public property.
Nothing in today's decision requires cities or their police to crack down harder on homeless people, but it will leave some of them free to do so.
California Governor Gavin Newsom praised the decision: “Today's ruling by the United States Supreme Court gives state and local officials the ultimate authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets. “This decision removes legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to implement common sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.”
Los Angeles attorney Theane Evangelis, who represented the Oregon city that appealed, said the court “provided urgent relief to the many communities that have struggled to address the growing problem of dangerous encampments.”
Ann Oliva, executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, condemned the decision.
“This decision sets a dangerous precedent that will cause undue harm to homeless people and give free rein to local officials who prefer pointless and costly arrests and incarcerations rather than real solutions,” he said. “At a time when elected officials must focus on evidence-based, long-term, sustainable solutions, including funding the affordable housing and supportive services their constituents need, this ruling allows leaders to shift the burden to law enforcement.” of the order. “This tactic has never succeeded in reducing homelessness in the past and will surely fail to reduce homelessness in the future.”
The case before the court took place in Grants Pass, Oregon, a town of 38,000 people. There were an estimated 50 to 600 homeless people and only a few shelters where there was not enough room for everyone.
Homeless advocates claimed that city police were ticketing and threatening people living on sidewalks or in their cars. They said the city's goal was to “drive” these homeless people out of the city.
They sued and won before a federal judge who struck down the anti-camping ordinance because the city was essentially punishing people for being homeless.
A divided Ninth Circuit agreed 2-1. Judge Rosyln Silver said that “the city of Grants Pass cannot, under the Eighth Amendment, enforce its anti-camping ordinances against homeless people merely for sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in their car at night when there is nowhere else in the city to go.”
The entire Ninth Circuit then divided 14 to 13 to uphold that ruling.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix were among two dozen government and business groups that urged the high court to hear the appeal in Johnson v. Grants Pass and reverse the 9th Circuit's decision.
Only once before — and 40 years ago — has a homeless case come before the Supreme Court.
A group called the Community for Creative Nonviolence applied for a permit in 1982 for a homeless awareness rally in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, and its application included a “symbolic tent city” that would sleep about 50 people.
The National Park Service approved the permit to demonstrate, but denied the request to sleep in the park. Advocates sued, alleging that the camping ban violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech. They lost before a federal judge, won in the U.S. Court of Appeals, and finally lost 7-2 in the Supreme Court in 1984.
Justice Byron White wrote for the court that the First Amendment allows reasonable limits on the “time, place, and manner” of demonstrations. “We have no trouble concluding that the Park Service may prohibit overnight stays in the parks involved in this case,” he wrote.
