The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday it will hear a case on whether regulations against camping on public property constitute "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
A decision in the case, Johnson, et al. v. City of Grants Pass, could have far-reaching implications on how cities address homelessness.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, Grants Pass, which is in southern Oregon about 47 miles from the California border, said it adopted three ordinances related to public sleeping and camping.
They are enforced through civil citations and not through criminal fines or jail terms. If a person has twice been cited for violating park regulations, city officers also have authority to issue an exclusion order barring that person from a city park for 30 days.
But in 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Grants Pass from enforcing public camping ordinances, saying it violated the cruel and unusual punishment provision of the Eighth Amendment, and prohibited the city from enforcing its public camping ordinance even through civil citations.
That decision built off a 2019 case in Martin v. City of Boise (Idaho), in which the 9th Circuit ruled a person cannot be criminally punished for sleeping in public if there's nowhere else for the person to go.
"The 9th Circuit's decisions have no foundation in the Constitution's original meaning or our Nation's history and traditions," the city wrote in its petition. "The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause [as its name suggests] prohibits 'methods of punishment' that inflict unnecessary pain and have fallen out of use."
Theane Evangelis, an attorney representing Grants Pass, told Oregon Public Radio the 9th Circuit's rulings in the Martin and Grants Pass cases are "legally wrong," adding they have "contributed to the growing problem of encampments in cities across the West." Evangelis said the decisions "tied the hands of local governments."
Amicus briefs in support of Grants Pass were filed on behalf of Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom; the California cities of San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; the city of Phoenix; and 20 Republican state attorneys general.
In a motion asking the Supreme Court not to pick up the case, Kelsi Brown Corkran, an attorney for Gloria Johnson and others who have camped in Grant Pass, wrote the 9th Circuit panel held only that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the city from punishing involuntarily homeless persons for engaging in "the unavoidable biological function of sleeping with 'rudimentary forms of protection' to survive cold nights when shelter is unavailable. None of the cases cited in the [city's] petition are to the contrary."
Corkran is with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.
"Time is of the essence for this exceptionally important question," the city wrote in its petition. "The Ninth Circuit, though nearly evenly split, has made clear that it will not clean up its outlier decisions on its own. But these decisions have erected a judicial roadblock preventing a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments in the West.
"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."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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