Supreme Court to look at whether some laws on homeless encampments amount to cruel and unusual punishment
By Devan Cole, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether city laws that punish individuals to curb the growth of homeless encampments violate the Constitution’s limits on cruel and unusual punishment.
The justices took up an appeal from Grants Pass, Oregon, of a federal court ruling preventing the city from enforcing its public camping ordinances through civil citations.
The case comes as cities grapple with a proliferation of large encampments on the streets as homeless populations grow.
In 2022, a 2-1 opinion by the a panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the city could not “enforce its anticamping ordinances against homeless persons for the mere act of sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in their car at night, when there was no other place in the City for them to go.”
The two homeless people in Grants Pass who challenged the city’s laws had urged the justices not to take up the case, stressing in court papers that “because there are no homeless shelters in Grants Pass … most of the City’s involuntarily homeless residents have nowhere to sleep but outside.”
“These ordinances collectively ‘prohibit individuals from sleeping in any public space in Grants Pass while using any type of item that falls into the category of ‘bedding’ or is used as ‘bedding’’ – language that extends far beyond ‘camping’ to prohibit sleeping with so much as a blanket or ‘a bundled up item of clothing as a pillow,’” they told the justices.
The city called the ruling a “judicial roadblock,” and major cities including Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles also urged the high court to take up the case.
“There is nothing cruel or unusual about a civil fine for violating commonplace restrictions on public camping,” attorneys for Grants Pass told the justices in court papers.
The city said the 9th Circuit ruling is at odds with those from other lower courts, warranting the Supreme Court’s intervention.
“These decisions have erected a judicial roadblock preventing a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments in the West,” the Grants Pass attorneys wrote. “The consequences of inaction are dire for those living both in and near encampments: crime, fires, the reemergence of medieval diseases, environmental harm, and record levels of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets.”
“The decision below … will further hamstring cities at the worst possible time,” they added.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had also asked the justices to hear the case, said in a statement Friday that the high court “can now correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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