Supreme Court upholds outdoor sleeping ban in homelessness case

The Supreme Court on Friday enforced a ban in an Oregon town about homeless residents sleeping outside. A decision that will likely extend far beyond the West Coast, as cities across the country grapple with a growing homeless crisis.

The ruling, by a 6-3 vote, was divided along ideological lines. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for a conservative supermajority, found that the ordinances, enacted in Grants Pass, Oregon, did not violate the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The measures punish sleeping and camping in public places, including sidewalks, streets and city parks.

According to Justice Gorsuch, these ordinances do not criminalize the homeless, but they do criminalize outdoor camping.

“It makes no difference whether the defendant charged is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on holiday or a student leaving his dorm room to camp on the lawn of a municipal building in protest,” he wrote.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the decision would leave the most vulnerable in society with fewer protections.

“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Judge Sotomayor wrote. “For some people, sleeping outside is their only option.”

That local laws impose fines and possible prison sentences on people who “sleep anywhere in public, at any time, including in their cars, as long as they use a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt for a pillow” effectively punishes people for homelessness, she wrote.

“That is unconscionable and unconstitutional,” Justice Sotomayor said as she read her dissent from the bench, a rare move that signals deep disagreement.

The decision was greeted with mixed reactions among leaders in Western states, especially in California, where increasingly visible encampments in major cities have put political pressure on governments to act.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who had urged the justices to take up the case, welcomed the ruling and acknowledged competing demands for more enforcement of encampments, but also raised concerns about the treatment of vulnerable people.

Even as the decision “removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years,” he said, the state “will continue to work with compassion to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with the resources they need to improve their lives.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has worked hard to get the city’s homeless into treatment and housing facilities, expressed disappointment with the ruling but vowed to continue the city’s commitment to housing and support services.

Lawmakers in western states pointed to a pivotal 2018 appeals court ruling that they say limits their power to clear camps.

That decisionby the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers many Western states, declared it cruel and unusual punishment for cities and states to penalize someone who sleeps outside when no beds are available in a shelter.

In California alone, an estimated 171,000 people recently became homeless, nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population and 40,000 more than six years earlier. Tents and encampments are common in many parts of the state.

The dispute originated in Grants Pass, a city of about 40,000 in the southern Oregon foothills. After residents complained about people sleeping in alleys and property damage in the city center, city officials passed a series of local ordinances banning sleeping in public spaces. The city had no homeless shelters, other than one run by a religious organization that, among other things, required attendance at Christian services.

A group of homeless residents filed a lawsuit against the city, challenging the ordinance and arguing that local laws effectively criminalize homelessness.

A federal judge temporarily sided with the homeless plaintiffs, ruling that the city did not have a shelter that met the requirements of the 2018 decision.

A divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling, after which the city asked the Supreme Court for an opinion.

The Supreme Court majority ruled that the Grants Pass ordinances were not unusual, as cities and states across the country have long imposed similar penalties. Under the laws, the city imposes a limited fine for a first offense, a temporary injunction prohibiting camping in the parks for repeat offenses, and up to 30 days in jail for violating such an injunction.

In his opinion, Judge Gorsuch asserted that public camping laws applied equally to everyone and therefore did not target the homeless.

The Ninth Circuit ruling that laid the foundation for the Grants Pass case was undoubtedly well-intentioned, he wrote, but it set a legal test that proved unworkable for the cities and states it governed. “These rules were made by federal courts in isolation from realities on the ground, and they have created confusion,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.

Judge Gorsuch, whose family roots lie in Colorado and who served as a federal appeals judge in Denver, imbued the decision with a Western perspective.

Homelessness in the United States has reached its highest level since the federal government began reporting data in 2007. The five states with the highest homelessness rates — California, Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona and Nevada — are all in the West, he wrote.

Policymakers should be given a wide range of tools to address the problem, Justice Gorsuch wrote, adding that the appeals court’s 2018 ruling struck down one of those tools.

Rather than helping “alleviate the homelessness crisis,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, the lower court’s ruling “may have inadvertently contributed to it,” paralyzing communities and creating confusion as courts and cities turned to litigation.

He said decisions about addressing homelessness are better left to policymakers at the state and local levels, not judges.

“A handful of federal judges” could not match “the collective wisdom of the American people in deciding” how to respond to “a pressing social issue like homelessness,” he said.

While the court’s liberal justices agreed with conservatives on the scale of the problem and the many reasons people become homeless, they said the question before them was simple.

“The only question here is whether the Constitution permits people to sleep outside when there is nowhere else to go,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, adding that the issue “has become increasingly relevant as many local governments have made criminalization a frontline response to homelessness.”

Criminalizing homelessness, she wrote, creates “a destabilizing cascade of harm.” When homeless people are fined or jailed, she wrote, they can lose their jobs, health care and housing options.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Grants Pass, she wrote, forcing someone without shelter to leave town.

When the decision was made, many people living in tents in the Grants Pass parks were mobilized.

Laura Gutowski, 56, who became homeless about two and a half years ago, said the ruling made her feel uncomfortable.

While she said she understood the frustration some residents had with the homeless population, she said there did not appear to be a solution that acknowledged the homeless.

“We should give the parks back to our children,” Ms. Gutowski said. “But they can’t just give them back and give us nothing. There has to be somewhere else we can still go.”

Darren Starnes, 55, who became homeless about a year and a half ago after living in Grants Pass for more than three decades, expressed concern that the ruling would take away from the momentum to find help for the city’s homeless.

“Without a backup plan to address the problem, they’re just making it worse,” he said. “Basically they’re trying to force everyone out of Grants Pass.”

Shawn Hubler contributed report.