The Supreme Court has issued its The long awaited verdict inside Grants Pass v. JohnsonThe most important legal challenge to the rights of homeless people in decades.
In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court ruled that cities that enact anti-camping bans, even when homeless people have nowhere else to go, do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Gorsuch was joined by the rest of the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not allow federal judges to take those rights and responsibilities away from the American people and dictate this nation’s homelessness policy in their place,” the opinion read.
Friday The ruling has huge implications for cities and people facing homelessness nationwide. It dealt a fatal blow to two Ninth Circuit decisions — Grant pass v . Johnson Case and its 2018 predecessor Martin v. Boise – That shaped cities’ response to homeless encampments.
Dozens of city and state leaders — both liberal and conservative — are hoping the U.S. Supreme Court Martin And Pass the grant The decisions, which they claimed were wrongly decided and left governments unable to manage their communities safely.
Many groups representing the rights of homeless people, instead, argued that there was no reason to reconsider the US Supreme Court’s rulings, and warned that doing so would make it easier to criminalize homeless people and harder to provide them with permanent housing. after
The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge Martin In 2019, but the pressure on the high court has increased as the nation’s homelessness crisis worsens, particularly in western states under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction.
More than 650,000 people in America experience homelessness on any given night and roughly 40 percent Among these people are sleeping outside on streets, cars, parks, train stations and other places not originally designed for humans. federal The data shows the end of 2023 Homelessness is on the rise in most states.
Homelessness advocates immediately condemned the ruling, warning that it would worsen the situation and further marginalize vulnerable Americans.
The Pass the grant The decision undoubtedly marks a significant blow to the constitutional rights of homeless people, and local governments will feel more confident in passing punitive policies with the blessing of the Supreme Court.
But the political battle over the tent canopy will not end. It’s just anxiety what city to be able to Do’s, and what they shouldn’t do.
Conservatives Want Clearing Homeless Tents to Be Non-Discretionary
Those who want cities to be more aggressive in clearing homeless tent encampments are celebrating.
Thien Evangelis, lead counsel for the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, “praised the court for the recovery.[ing] The ability of cities on the front lines of this crisis to develop lasting solutions that meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of their communities, while keeping our public spaces safe and clean.” He said he hopes that years from now this is the “turning point in America’s homelessness crisis. points” will be recognized.
But in reverse Martin And Pass the grant While cities will make it easier to clean up tent shelters, local governments still have considerable discretion over whether they should do so
And especially in liberal cities, where leaders may be more inclined to leave people experiencing homelessness alone (or come under more pressure from advocates to do so), some conservatives have long felt that extra legislative and legislative steps are needed to force cities to act. will need .
“Many cities have used it Martin As an excuse, you know, they throw up their hands and say, ‘Our hands are tied.’ Ilan Warman, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who hoped the Supreme Court would overturn the decisions “We don’t think that was a fair reading, you can’t enforce your camping ban, and vice versa Pass the grant That argument must be taken away [from cities]. But they still don’t need to do anything at that time.”
Instead, Wurman et al has been promoted Public nuisance lawsuits as a way to force cities to tear down tent canopies. Such lawsuits can be based on things like loud noise or air pollution, but can also be based on things like unsanitary conditions or other health hazards. Importantly, private citizens have a right of action to bring public nuisance claims.
The first successful example of this technique was in 2022 against the city of Phoenix, Arizona, when Warman and colleagues sued for a declaration that a homeless encampment on city property constituted a public nuisance. More than 1,000 people were relocated to the camp – known as “the zone” – and plaintiffs point to crime, defecation, drug use, theft and other security risks there that threaten public health. Arizona State law defines “[a]Any place, condition or building controlled or managed by a government agency and not maintained in a sanitary condition is a “public nuisance … dangerous to the public health.”
a judge He ruled in favor of the plaintiffs Last year, “Zone” declared a public nuisance and ordered Phoenix to deal with the situation. The camp has now been cleared, but the city is appealing the decision.
Urman has had less success in his other two cases following public nuisance tactics.
Last September, two Tucson homeowners and a Tucson business owner sued the city for failing to clean up a canopy, citing things like trash, fires set by residents burning uncontrollably, and vehicle and residential burglaries.
As in Phoenix, the plaintiffs asked the court to declare the campsite a public nuisance and order Tucson to clean it up. The city argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing and could not be held liable for “fundamental public policy,” including whether and how to spend its public resources.
In May, a judge ruled in favor of the city and concluded that the plaintiffs had failed to show Tucson “legal causation for their alleged injuries.” The judge also drew contrasts between the situation in Tucson and the encampment in Phoenix, where Phoenix police actually helped homeless people stay there.
Residents are now appealing the case, and Warman told me he believes they will win.
“The judge in the Tucson case agreed with us that the city consented to the encampment but then he said the city didn’t consent to the feces or drugs, and that’s what we lost,” Urman said. “We think that’s quite frankly crazy, don’t you? Because everyone understands that the camps come with feces and drugs in public. Witnesses in their own cities have testified that they’re always feces, urine, and needles.”
Warman recently saw another setback in his third public nuisance case in Salt Lake City, Utah. The lawsuit, which was originally filed last September, was dismissed in March, with the judge upholding the city’s right to exercise its discretion.
“Any member of the public can complain about how a city allocates its resources, and many such complaints can be couched under the broad umbrella of nuisance laws,” the judge wrote. “The Doctrine of Public Duty Limits on when such complaints can be litigated in court against the ballot box.”
Warman told me they are also appealing the case, briefly in court next month.
Homelessness advocates believe the nuisance legal strategy will ultimately fail because governments generally enjoy too much latitude in deciding where to put their resources and what laws to enforce. The District Attorney of Sacramento filed the case Public Nuisance Cases Alleging last year that the city had allowed its camps to get out of control, a district judge ruled that most of the DA’s complaints were legally insufficient.
“The Phoenix case is an outlier,” Will Knight, director of decriminalization at the National Homelessness Law Center, told me. “I think they’re going to lose on appeal in Tucson and Salt Lake City, and they’re going to lose similar nuisance cases.”
Erwin Chemerinskydean of UC Berkeley’s law school, also told me he thinks there’s a “huge difference” between a Ninth Circuit decision and the court’s requiring cities to clean up tent encampments or arrest homeless people.
Still, advocates intend to try different strategies, including some legal ones. The Cicero Institute, an Austin-based conservative think tank, has pushed bills across the country to ban outdoor homeless camping and hold cities accountable for failing to enforce those bans.
A Cicero-backed bill in Missouri that was signed into law in 2022 would allow state attorneys general Sue the local government That does not enforce their camp ban. Earlier this year Florida Republicans pass a new anti-camping law It allows not only state attorneys general, but also local residents and businesses to sue local governments if they fail to enforce their bans. It goes into effect this fall.
Another strategy advocates hope to eventually take nationwide is at the ballot box. This fall, in Arizona, voters will vote In the first type of ballot measure That could allow property owners to sue for tax refunds if they can prove financial loss from homeless tent camps. The right-leaning Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based think tank, drafted the measure and hopes other cities will follow suit.
“Today’s decision is the first step toward a smarter approach to solving the many problems of homelessness,” Goldwater Institute Vice President for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur said in a statement Friday. “By overturning that decision, the Supreme Court today enables local communities to find real solutions for those who suffer — and who deserve better than being forced to live in public parks and sidewalks indefinitely by the Ninth Circuit’s fiat.”
Homelessness advocates hope to mobilize the public around housing solutions
Homelessness advocates, taking a page from abortion rights groups after being flipped Ro v. Wade, Discussions have been held with lawmakers to advance both state and federal legislation Martin v. Boise the decision
In other words, they hope the Supreme Court will legislate against what it just ruled and ensure that homeless people cannot be punished for sleeping outside public property if adequate alternatives are not available.
They also criticized the decision: “This decision sets a dangerous precedent that will cause unnecessary harm to people experiencing homelessness and gives free rein to local officials who prefer pointless and costly arrests and imprisonments to real solutions,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of End Homelessness. National Alliance to “This ruling allows leaders to shift the burden onto law enforcement. This strategy has consistently failed to reduce homelessness in the past and will most certainly fail to reduce homelessness in the future.”
Ultimately, liberal homelessness activists hope to use Pass the grant Focusing the national conversation on policy solutions that they say will actually solve homelessness, including funding for universal rental assistance, public housing repairs and eviction prevention. Advocates plan to call for $365 billion over the next year to fund these initiatives.
Incumbent advocates followed by sending an email blast asking people to email their elected officials for more funding for housing and “Housing not handcuffs“Advocacy Campaigns.
“We knew from day one that the Supreme Court case was not going to end homelessness,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center. “Now, we must seize this moment in time to ensure that Congress and the White House do their work to fund the housing needed to ensure that no one in the world’s richest country experiences homelessness.”
