Supreme Court divided on rights of homeless

Oregon case could be most significant on issue in decades.

Supreme Court justices expressed concern on Monday about punishing homeless people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go while also struggling with how to ensure local and state leaders have the flexibility to deal with the growing number of unhoused individuals nationwide.

The court’s review of a set of Oregon anti-camping laws could lead to the most significant ruling on the rights of the unhoused in decades, with potentially sweeping implications for state capitals and city streets.

Throughout the more than two-hour argument, the court’s three liberal justices were most skeptical of laws passed by the city of Grants Pass that they suggested criminalize the most basic of human needs.

Justice Elena Kagan told the city’s attorney that its laws go well beyond the need to clear encampments from public spaces. “Sleeping is a biological necessity,” Kagan said. “Sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked where people are supposed to sleep in a city that lacks sufficient shelter beds.

But several conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, suggested that policymakers, and not judges, should be setting local rules for dealing with homeless people.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked the Biden administration’s lawyer why “these nine people” are the right ones to “weigh the policy judgment.”

The Supreme Court agreed to intervene in the case after hearing pleas from an unlikely coalition that spanned the political spectrum, including liberal leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and officials in Republican-led states like Montana and Alabama. Their legal briefs described governments overwhelmed by the severity of the problem: More than 600,000 people are homeless nationwide, according to federal data, and nearly half sleep outside.

The case began in Grants Pass, Oregon, after officials started strictly enforcing a set of measures that outlawed sleeping or camping in public spaces like parks and in parked cars, imposing fines ranging from $75 to $295. The penalties increased substantially when unpaid and could eventually result in jail time or a park ban.

Three homeless people — Debra Blake, Gloria Johnson and John Logan — sued Grants Pass in 2018, saying the city, with a population of 40,000 people, was punishing them unconstitutionally “based on their status of being involuntarily homeless.” They cited the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

There are officially more than 600 unhoused residents of Grants Pass, with another 1,000 living on the edge, but local service providers say at least twice as many are homeless. Grants Pass does not have a homeless shelter. Its only major transitional housing program, the Gospel Rescue Mission, is a privately-run religious facility with 138 beds and stringent requirements for residents.