Supreme Court Upholds Homeless Ordinance Imposing Criminal Penalties

In City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ____ (2024), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a city ordinance that imposes criminal penalties on homeless sleeping outside. According to the Court, the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Facts of the Case

Grants Pass, an Oregon city of approximately 38,000 people, has 600 residents who experience homelessness on a given day. Like many local governments, Grants Pass has public-camping laws that restrict encampments on public property. The Grants Pass Municipal Code prohibits activities such as camping on public property or parking overnight in the city’s parks. Initial violations can trigger a fine, while multiple violations can result in imprisonment.

In a prior decision, Martin v. Boise, No. 15-35845 (9th Cir. 2018), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause bars cities from enforcing public-camping ordinances like these against homeless individuals whenever the number of homeless individuals in a jurisdiction exceeds the number of “practically available” shelter beds. Following Martin, lawsuits against Western cities in the Ninth Circuit grew exponentially.

Plaintiffs filed a putative class action on behalf of homeless people living in Grants Pass, claiming that the city’s ordinances against public camping violated the Eighth Amendment. The district court certified the class and entered a Martin injunction prohibiting Grants Pass from enforcing its laws against homeless individuals in the city.

Applying Martin’s reasoning, the district court found everyone without shelter in Grants Pass was “involuntarily homeless” because the city’s total homeless population outnumbered its “practically available” shelter beds. The beds at Grants Pass’s charity-run shelter did not qualify as “available” in part because that shelter has rules requiring residents to abstain from smoking and to attend religious services. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s Martin injunction in relevant part.

Supreme Court’s Decision

The Supreme Court reversed, holding that enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. “Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. “At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not.”

In reaching its decision, the majority emphasized that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause focuses on the question what “method or kind of punishment” a government may im- pose after a criminal conviction, not on the question whether a government may criminalize particular behavior in the first place. The majority also found that the fines and jail sentences imposed under the ordinance don’t “qualify as cruel and unusual.”

The Court next turned to the Ninth Circuit’s reliance on Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962). In Robinson, the Supreme Court held that under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, California could not enforce a law providing that “‘[n]o person shall…be addicted to the use of narcotics.’” According to the Court, the law ran afoul of the Eighth Amendment because it made the status of being an addict a crime.

In declining to extend Robinson to this case, the majority noted that Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. It also cited Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514 (1968), in which the Court rejected a similar request to extend Robinson.

Finally, Justice Gorsuch discussed the problems resulting from the so-called “Martin experiment,” including legal uncertainty and litigation. “The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy,” he wrote.