Supreme Court upholds fines against homeless in encampments on public property

The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Oregon city’s right to fine homeless people camping out on public property.

In a 6-3 decision that broke down along ideological lines, the high court determined that the fines levied against vagrants by Grants Pass do not trample rights covered by the Eighth Amendment, which protects against excessive bail, excessive fines or “cruel and unusual punishments.”

The ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson will almost certainly reverberate far beyond Oregon and give cities across the country more leeway in legislating their homeless problems.

“Yes, people will disagree over which policy responses are best; they may experiment with one set of approaches only to find later another set works better; they may find certain responses more appropriate for some communities than others,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.

“But in our democracy, that is their right.”

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The high court was reviewing ordinances in Grants Pass that restricted homeless encampments in public settings.

The city’s policy calls for violators to initially face fines of at least $295, but repeat offenders may be banned from a city park for 30 days. If someone violates a ban order, they can be charged with criminal trespass, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously determined in a September 2022 split decision that Grants Pass could not issue citations for “the mere act of sleeping outside … or for sleeping in their car at night when there was no other place in the City for them to go.”

But Gorsuch argued that the Eighth Amendment “does not authorize federal judges to wrest [its] rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.”

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the dissent and was joined by the two other liberals on the bench.

“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” she contended. “For some people, sleeping outside is their only option.”

The Oregon city, she said, “punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional.

“That is just another way to ban the person.”

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Advocates for the homeless have argued that if vagrants in some areas are booted from public spaces, they have nowhere else to go.

Sotomayor suggested that the Grants Pass policy discriminates against homeless people over their lack of a place to live.

“Thus, ‘what separates prohibited conduct from permissible conduct is a person’s intent to “live” in public spaces,” she wrote. “Infants napping in strollers, Sunday afternoon picnickers, and nighttime stargazers may all engage in the same conduct of bringing blankets to public spaces [and sleeping].

“But they are exempt from punishment because they have a separate ‘place to live.’ “

Last year, about 650,000 individuals in the US lacked a permanent place to live, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development , a 12% increase from 2022 and the most since tracking began in 2007.

The Grants Pass case drew widespread attention in municipalities across the country. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state has been battered by a homeless crisis, previously begged the Supreme Court last month to uphold the Grants Pass law.

The Ninth Circuit court’s decision applied to Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

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