Supreme Court says Oregon city can ban homeless encampments on public property
The United States Supreme Court has upheld an Oregon city’s ordinance prohibiting homeless individuals from setting up encampments on public property, concluding that such restrictions do not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The high court ruled 6-3 on Friday morning in the case of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, et al.that Grants Pass’ ordinance against homeless encampments was lawful.
Thus, the Supreme Court reversed a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and remanded the case back for further proceedings consistent with their newly released opinion.
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Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion, writing that the Constitution’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause “focuses on the question what ‘method or kind of Punishment’ a government may impose after a criminal conviction, not on the question whether a government may criminalize particular behavior in the first place or how it may go about securing a conviction for that offense.”
“Under the city’s laws, it makes no difference whether the charged defendant is homeless, a backpacker on vacation passing through town, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building,” Gorsuch continued. “In that respect, the city’s laws parallel those found in countless jurisdictions across the country.”
Gorsuch went on to note that “many substantive legal protections and provisions of the Constitution may have important roles to play when States and cities seek to enforce their laws against the homeless.”
“The only question we face is whether one specific provision of the Constitution — the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment — prohibits the enforcement of public-camping laws,” he wrote.
“The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a dissent, being joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, arguing that the local ordinance “punishes” people “for being homeless.”
“It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles,” wrote Sotomayor.
“Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
In March, the religious liberty legal group Becket filed an amicus brief in the case, taking exception to the Ninth Circuit's decision not including religious homeless shelters when counting available beds for the homeless.
“Becket offers this brief to explain that the Ninth Circuit’s novel interpretation of the Eighth Amendment was made possible only by grossly misconstruing the Establishment Clause,” stated the amicus brief.
“Becket is concerned that the Ninth Circuit’s standard — which categorically disregards consideration of housing at religious shelters in part due to their ‘overall religious atmosphere,’ ‘Christian messaging,’ and ‘Christian iconography on the shelter walls’ — improperly relies on discredited reasoning.”
