- Term
- 2023-2024
City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
This case involved the policies a city can adopt to limit public encampments by people experiencing homelessness without violating the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. In 2018, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Martin v. City of Boise that cities can criminalize camping outside so long as the city has enough shelter beds to accommodate homeless people in the city. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon had an anti-camping ordinance that allows for the arrest of people sleeping or camping in public, even when the city did not maintain enough shelter beds to accommodate its homeless residents. The Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the city’s ordinance criminalizing homelessness for those with no alternative to sleeping outside.
On June 28, 2024, in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority ruled that criminalizing homelessness does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, even if the city does not provide an adequate number of shelter beds for homeless residents. In a dissent joined by Justices Jackson and Kagan, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority’s ruling “leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
