From footnote 8 to the Eighth Amendment

The Chico city manager’s view that footnote 8 in Martin v Boise gives him carte blanch authority to skirt its intent is not only disingenuous, it’s making our city less clean and safe. It also middle-fingers its nose at the city’s responsibility to ensure the health and safety of everyone in our community — not just the alt-right minded law and order crowd wielding laws and legal precedence in any manner suitable to their myopic view of who is worthy in our community, and who is not.

Yet here we are, with electeds and city staff twisting a portion of footnote 8 into a flimsy validation for illegal encampment evictions, to the detriment of health and safety, and in clear violation of the last sentence in footnote 8 — Whether some other ordinance is consistent with the Eight Amendment will depend, as here, on whether it punishes a person for lacking a means to live out the “universal and unavoidable consequences of being human” in the way the ordinance describes.

The derelict and dangerous actions of the majority of Chico

City Council, and the minions doing their bidding, would like everyone to close their eyes and ears to the concluding statement in Martin v. Boise: We conclude that a municipality cannot criminalize such behavior consistently with the Eighth Amendment when no sleeping space is practically available in any shelter.

I conclude that Chico’s unlawful encampment sweep justification is a pile of vile poo.

— Bill Mash, Chico