Why an Oregon homelessness case matters so much to California
The Supreme Court began hearing a case Monday that could have profound implications for how the United States deals with its escalating homelessness crisis.
The case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, asks whether fining homeless people for sleeping outside when there isn’t adequate shelter space for them amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Though the case originated in Oregon, it is being watched across the country, perhaps nowhere more closely than in California.
More than 180,000 people are homeless in California, a figure that has grown significantly over the past decade. That is about one-third of the nation’s homeless people, a far greater share than California’s 12% of the population as a whole.
State and local officials say that their efforts to address homelessness have been hampered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees nine western states, including California. In a series of opinions since 2018, the appellate court has ruled that penalizing homeless people for sleeping outdoors when they have no alternative shelter violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
On the ground, that has constrained cities that try to keep tent camps from proliferating in parks, on sidewalks and in other public spaces. Local officials in California say they are reluctant to enforce anticamping ordinances on even a small scale, lest they be sued.
Advocates for homeless people argue that cities have plenty of other tools to protect public health and to keep sidewalks and parks open, and that they are avoiding an obvious but expensive legal solution to the problem: building more affordable housing.But determining what’s legal can be time-consuming and expensive.
For instance, in San Francisco, which is embroiled in a lawsuit over encampments, a sweeping injunction based on the Grants Pass decision and other 9th Circuit rulings has complicated law enforcement around downtown tent camps for more than a year. State legislators in Sacramento have repeatedly quashed bills that sought to ban homeless encampments near schools, transit stops and other places, in part because of questions about their constitutionality.
The case before the Supreme Court on Monday involved an anticamping ordinance in Grants Pass, Oregon. Building on its 2018 ruling in a case out of Boise, Idaho, that it was unconstitutional to arrest people for sleeping outdoors, the appellate court ruled in the Grants Pass case that it was also unconstitutional to fine them for sleeping outdoors with pillows, blankets or other bedding or shelter supplies. The city appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.