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
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