(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . SCOTUS - stay awake or be arrested: cities and towns empowered to criminalize homelessness. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-28 Reported at High Country News, Supreme Court gives cities and towns power to criminalize homelessness: in the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson case, the conservative SCOTUS majority ruled 6 to 3 today in favor of the small Oregon city, overturning Martin v. Boise, in deciding that cities and municipalities can punish people for sleeping outside, even when they have nowhere else to go … finding that [homelessness is not an involuntary condition and is not subject to Eighth Amendment protections; and that Grants Pass’s] broad public camping ban did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment. “This is the single most important case on homelessness in the past few decades,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization, which joined several others in writing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting the rights of unhoused people in Johnson, called the decision “devastating”. “[This] risks opening the door to a whole slew of punitive measures that cities could enact in an effort to just push unhoused people out of their communities,” Kashyap said…. The Oregon Law Center, representing the respondents in the case, called the ruling “troubling [and] legally and morally wrong,” with potential for worsening the national homelessness crisis. The conservative majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, holds that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, is not violated by the city of Grants Pass banning sleeping outdoors and imposing fines on people who do. In the dissent of herself, Justice Kagan, and Justice Brown, Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the camping ban of Grants Pass criminalizes people for sleeping, a “biological necessity.” Her dissent stated that the SCOTUS majority was exclusively focused on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.” The Court did not rule out the possibility that the Grants Pass ordinances violate other protections afforded to unhoused people under the Eighth Amendment, such as the Due Process Clause or Excessive Fines Clause, affirming that the decision is narrow and does not give cities unchecked power to criminalize homelessness, Kashyap said. [But it does remove] a narrow but critical provision that had barred some Western states from fining, ticketing and jailing homeless residents for public camping when adequate shelter was unavailable. Cities across the West have passed numerous anti-camping ordinances, violation of which constitutes the crime, fines and other measures being the punishment, amid an escalating homelessness crisis nationally. California, several conservative-led states, and mayors of some Western cities had submitted briefs stating their need for ability to enforce public camping bans as part of their claimed multiprong efforts to “tackle the complicated issues of housing and homelessness.” Martin v. Boise was a 2018 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in response to a 2009 lawsuit by six homeless plaintiffs against the city of Boise, Idaho regarding the city's anti-camping ordinance... The ruling held that cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough homeless shelter beds available for their homeless population... It did not necessarily mean a city cannot enforce any restrictions on camping on public property. The decision was based on the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Grants Pass has a record of hostility toward the homeless. It’s sole shelter is the 138 bed Gospel Rescue Mission, for a city population of 40,000 with only 1% housing vacancy, and an average of 600 people homeless at any given moment. The Gospel Rescue Mission is a high-barrier shelter, i.e., all residents must work at the Mission full-time, keep sober, and attend daily church services. No exceptions for any homeless person who can’t or won’t comply. Starting in 2013, the City Council openly stated the intention of enacting laws to force homeless people out, under guise of vagabond concerns — so they “will want to move on down the road” — with requirements like having to change location every three days, and LEOs empowered to aggressively ticket unsheltered people city-wide, with fines of hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, and not sparing long-time members of the community. Helen Cruz ... was fined $2,000 for sleeping in a public park. Cruz had lived in Grants Pass for four decades before she lost her housing in 2016. Even though she was working two jobs, as a house cleaner and at a motel, she couldn’t afford the city’s steep rent…. [C] currently living in a church [Cruz said people are scared, and] that she feels like her elected officials “have no kindness and compassion for the homeless.” … In 2017, the Oregon Law center filed a class action lawsuit on the behalf of Debra Blake, an unhoused resident of Grants Pass, who passed away in 2021. Gloria Johnson and John Logan stepped up as class representatives. In 2020, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit sided with the plaintiffs…. Read the full, excellent HighCountryNews article for more background, the limited protections that have existed in the region and beyond, and anticipated ramifications of the current SCOTUS decision. In the words of Sara Rankin, a professor of law at Seattle University and head of Seattle’s Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, “(This decision) removes the most basic protections that recognize the humanity of homeless folks.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/28/2249548/-SCOTUS-stay-awake-or-be-arrested-cities-and-towns-empowered-to-criminalize-homelessness?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/