The Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Oregon city's law aimed at banning homeless residents from sleeping outdoors, saying the city did not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision will have repercussions beyond Oregon and will change the way Western cities and states police homelessness.
The decision was a 6-3 vote split along ideological lines, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch writing for the majority. The law, enacted in Grants Pass, Oregon, penalizes sleeping or camping in public places, including sidewalks, streets and city parks.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote in dissent that the ruling reduces protections for the most vulnerable in society.
She added that the law imposes fines and possible imprisonment on people who “sleep anywhere, at any time, in a public place, including in their cars, using even the slightest blanket for warmth or a rolled up shirt as a pillow,” as a punishment for being homeless.
“It is unjust and unconstitutional,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. She read a dissenting opinion from the court, a rare sign of deep disagreement.
The Supreme Court agreed to step in after an unusual coalition urged the justices to consider the case. State lawmakers in Republican-led states like Arizona and liberal leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom have pointed to a key court decision from 2018 that has prevented them from clearing out encampments and responding to a growing and increasingly visible crisis.
The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers western states, was the first to declare that it is cruel and unusual punishment for cities and states to punish people for sleeping outdoors when there are no available shelter beds.
In California alone, an estimated 171,000 people are homeless, nearly one-third of the nation's homeless population. There are now 40,000 more homeless people in California than there were six years ago, and tents and encampments are common in many parts of the state.
The conflict erupted in Grants Pass, a town of about 40,000 people in the foothills of southern Oregon. After residents complained about people sleeping in alleys and damaging downtown buildings, city leaders implemented a series of local ordinances banning sleeping in public places. The town had no homeless shelters, only one run by a religious organization, which required attendance at a Christian religious service, among other rules.
A group of homeless people filed a lawsuit against the city challenging the ordinance, arguing that the local law essentially criminalizes the homeless, and that although the law is a civil penalty, it could ultimately lead to prison time, they said.
A federal judge tentatively sided with the homeless plaintiffs, finding the city doesn't have shelters that meet the requirements of the 2018 ruling.
A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's decision, so the city appealed to the Supreme Court.
In Grants Pass, tents and makeshift camps have popped up in many of the city's public parks, creating particular tension for residents in a city that relies on tourism revenue. Local code enforcement officials say they enforce property ordinances but there is little they can do to remove the tents from the parks.
During lengthy and sometimes contentious oral arguments in late April, the justices' questions reflected the complexity of the debate over homelessness.
They struggled with where to draw the line in regulating homelessness and, crucially, who should make the rules.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to sum up the conservative opinion, suggesting the issue was best resolved by lawmakers and cities and states themselves: “Why do we think these nine people are best placed to make and evaluate policy judgments?”
Meanwhile, Justice Elena Kagan, summing up the position of the Supreme Court's liberal justices, strongly questioned the city's argument that homelessness is not protected by the Constitution because it is not a state of being.
“Can homelessness be criminalized?” Justice Elena Kagan asked the city's attorney, Theanne D. Evangelis.
“Well, I don't think homelessness is like a drug addiction,” Evangelis replied.
“Homelessness is a status,” Justice Kagan responded. “It's a status of not having a home.”