The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether homeless people have a constitutional right to camp on public property when they have no other place to sleep.
Heeding appeals from city officials in California and the West, the court will review decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which found it cruel and unusual punishment for cities to deny homeless people a place to sleep. .
As a result of the Ninth Circuit's rulings, public officials in California and the eight other Western states under its jurisdiction face increased scrutiny and legal challenges when they act to clear encampments or relocate homeless people.
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 restore its authority over sidewalks and parks, or at least to clarify the law.
City attorneys said it's not yet clear whether encampments can be removed from sidewalks or parks if people living on the streets reject an offer to move to temporary shelter.
They blame the Ninth Circuit's rulings (in cases from Boise, Idaho, and Grants Pass, Oregon) for the worsening homelessness crisis in West Coast states. California alone is “home to half of the country's homeless population,” they said in their appeal in Grants Pass v. Johnson.
The court said it would hear arguments in the case in April and issue a ruling at the end of June.
Newsom welcomed the court's decision to hear the case.
“California has invested billions to address homelessness, but court rulings have tied the hands of state and local governments in addressing this problem,” he said. “The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly lawsuit delays that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and provide services to those in need.”
Theane Evangelis, the Los Angeles attorney representing the city of Grants Pass, said she hopes the high court will agree that the Ninth Circuit's rulings “are legally incorrect and have tied the hands of local governments as they work to address the urgent homelessness crisis.”
But an Oregon attorney who filed a lawsuit on behalf of several homeless people in Grants Pass argued that cities have not been denied all authority to regulate encampments.
“The question before the court is whether cities can punish homeless residents simply for living without access to shelter,” said Ed Johnson, litigation director at the Oregon Law Center. “Yet, some politicians and others cynically and falsely blame the judiciary for the homelessness crisis to distract the public and deflect blame for years of failed policies.”
In the past, the Supreme Court applied the Eighth Amendment's ban on inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment” to limit how the government treats those convicted of crimes.
Homeless advocates point to a 1962 ruling that limited what could be considered a crime.
In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court struck down part of a California law that made it a crime to be addicted to narcotics. Lawrence Robinson had been arrested by Los Angeles police officers, who said his arm was discolored by “numerous needle marks.” He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 90 days in jail.
The Supreme Court later overturned his conviction and ruled that it was cruel and unusual to punish someone, not for using or selling drugs, but for the “disease” of “narcotics addiction.”
In 2006, Ninth Circuit judges cited that ruling to strike down a Los Angeles sidewalk ordinance that authorized police to arrest people “lying or sleeping” on the streets. The three-judge panel said homeless people were being punished simply because they had nowhere to sleep.
Instead of appealing to the Supreme Court, the city settled the case and agreed not to enforce its ordinance during nighttime hours.
The Ninth Circuit issued a broader ruling in 2018 that struck down ordinances in Boise, Idaho, that authorized police to arrest or fine people who slept or camped on public property.
The justices said the Supreme Court's Robinson decision established the “principle that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the state from punishing an involuntary act or condition if it is the inevitable consequence of one's status or being.”
In Grants Pass, a city of 38,000 people in southern Oregon, there were an estimated 50 to 600 homeless people. In response to a lawsuit filed by homeless advocates, a federal judge and a Ninth Circuit panel struck down its anti-camping ordinance because the city did not have “adequate shelter” for all of them.
“We affirm the district court's ruling that the city of Grants Pass cannot, pursuant to the 8th Amendment, enforce its anti-homeless encampment ordinances for the mere act of sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in your car. at night, when there is nowhere else in town for them to go,” said Judge Roslyn Silver, who wrote the lower court opinion.
When the court's conservatives asked that the entire Ninth Circuit reconsider that ruling, they fell short by a vote of 14 to 13.
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the city's lawyers highlighted the practical problems of homelessness.
“Across the West,” they said, “hundreds of thousands of people camp in public, their tents and belongings occupying sidewalks, parks and trails. Cities want to help those in encampments get the services they need while ensuring our communities remain safe, but they are paralyzed in responding to public encampments and drug overdoses, murders, sexual assaults , diseases and fires that inevitably accompany them.”
The closest the Supreme Court came to ruling on the issue was in 1982. A group called the Community for Creative Nonviolence requested a permit for a demonstration in Lafayette Square, across from the White House.
Their request included a “symbolic tent city” where about 50 people would sleep.
The 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 free speech protection. They lost before a federal judge, won in the U.S. Court of Appeals, and finally lost 7 to 2 in the Supreme Court in 1984.
Writing for the court, Judge Byron White said the First Amendment allows reasonable limits on the “time, place and manner” of demonstrations. “We have very little problem concluding that the Park Service can prohibit overnight stays in the parks involved here,” he wrote.
