The US Supreme Court ruled Friday that California and Western cities can enforce laws banning homeless camping on sidewalks and other public property.
Judges Disagreement with the 9th Circuit Court A court in San Francisco ruled that city officials preventing homeless people from sleeping on the streets or in parks is not “cruel and unusual” punishment.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the city attorneys for Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix were among two dozen government and business groups urging the high court to hear the case. Appeal in the case Grants Pass v. Johnson And the 9th Circuit reversed.
Though Newsom and others have welcomed the decision, it has been a controversial topic, dividing the more moderate wing of the party from progressives.
How will this ruling change the way California officials deal with homeless camps?
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over nine states in the West, recognized constitutional protections for people who are homeless and have no place to sleep. It remains the only federal appellate court in the country to do so.
In multiple decisions, the 9th Circuit has held that cities violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment when police arrest or fine people who don’t have access to shelter.
The Supreme Court ruling is a significant victory for Western city officials and a setback for homeless rights advocates. Since 2018, advocates have won rulings from the 9th Circuit that said it was unconstitutional to enforce anti-camping laws against people who have neither a home nor a place to sleep.
While the decision doesn’t force cities to take harsher enforcement action against homeless people, it will free some of them to do so.
Is it up to local governments to decide how to deal with this problem?
Yes.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote that people will disagree about which policy responses are best. Cities may experiment with one kind of approach but later find that another works better, and some responses may be more appropriate for some communities than others.
“But in our democracy, it is their right,” he said.
“Homelessness is complex,” he wrote. “It has many causes. So the public policy responses needed to address it may be varied. At its core, this case raises the question of whether the 8th Amendment gives federal judges the primary responsibility for assessing those causes and crafting those responses. It does not.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the decision gives state and local officials “decisive authority to enact and enforce policies to remove unsafe encampments from our streets.”
“This decision clears up legal ambiguities that for years have tied the hands of local officials and limited their ability to take commonsense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities,” he said.
What’s the view like from LA City Hall?
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass criticized the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it “disappointing” and arguing that it should not be used to jail homeless residents or drive them from one city to another.
Bass, who declared a homelessness emergency on his first day in office, indicated the decision would not change his approach to the crisis, which has largely focused on moving homeless Angelenos out of encampments and into hotels, motels and other forms of temporary housing.
Bass said in his statement that arresting homeless people or driving them out of the community to another city is “more costly to taxpayers than actually solving the problem.”
“The only way to get through this crisis is to get people indoors with housing and supportive services,” he said. “In the City of Los Angeles, we will continue to move forward with this approach, which helped get hundreds of thousands more Angelenos indoors than we did last year.”
Bass has made addressing homelessness his top priority when he takes office in December 2022. Inside Safe Initiative Some of the biggest and strongest camps in the city have been dealt with.
Inside Safe is offered as a voluntary program, in which homeless residents are given the option to choose from outreach workers whether or not they want to live inside the home. However, the city also has a law, known as Municipal Code 41.18, which requires that homeless residents be housed in a home. bans on homeless people Avoid sleeping or pitching a tent in certain locations.
Under 41.18, homeless people can be charged if they set up tents within 500 feet of schools and daycare centers. The law prohibits camping or loitering within two feet of a fire hydrant, five feet of a doorway or 10 feet of a driveway.
The city law also prohibits camps from blocking wheelchair access. And it allows the City Council to designate certain “sensitive” areas, such as libraries, seniors centers and freeway overpasses, as no-go areas for camps.
What are officials in other cities saying?
In a phone interview, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parisi He said the high court had “ultimately given a good verdict” and added that the city’s planning “be too aggressiveParis said he’s not concerned about “proper camps,” but rather about people “who camp near neighborhoods, near shopping centers.”
“We’re going to move them very quickly,” he said, adding that the city has a “state-of-the-art shelter for the homeless” with beds available.
“Of course, our issues are different than downtown L.A., because we have 96 square miles and only a third of it is developed. There are plenty of places these people can camp, it doesn’t have to be in our front yard,” Paris said. “That can’t always happen in L.A., you don’t have a lot of options.”
“This is not an invitation for them to send their homeless people to us,” he said.
Paris agreed with Gorsuch that the decision should be placed in the hands of city officials, adding, “That’s called democracy.”
“That’s a local government decision,” he said. “It would be a lot easier if the federal government didn’t interfere with most of the decisions we make.”
In San Diego, one of the cities that had urged the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, Mayor Todd Gloria said the decision “brings much-needed clarity on how the city can enforce our laws against unsafe encampments.”
However, he added that “this will not change our strategy towards homelessness.”
“It’s clear that the 1,000 new shelter opportunities we’ve added over the last three years are helping to reduce the number of homeless people on the street, and we intend to continue adding additional beds,” he said in a statement.
San Francisco Mayor London BreedShe welcomed the Supreme Court’s review of the case as part of her broader effort to tackle the city’s crime and homelessness problems last year, saying the decision “will help cities like San Francisco manage our public spaces more effectively and efficiently.”
Breed has long lamented that, despite the city putting more resources into transitional housing and treatment services, people living on the streets often refuse to seek shelter.
It is estimated that 8,323 people are homeless in San Francisco, a city of 808,000. The growing number of tents and the growing number of homeless in areas like the Tenderloin or South of Market have become a focal point in Breed’s difficult re-election battle this November, which has four other serious opponents, including two centrist candidates who have pivoted their campaigns largely on blaming Breed for the deteriorating conditions of the streets.
“San Francisco has made significant investments in shelter and housing, and we will continue to step up with our hardworking City employees to offer their services,” Breed said in a prepared statement. “But too often these offers are rejected, and we need to be able to enforce our laws, especially to prevent long-term encampments.”
Breed said the city will now adjust its policies in line with the ruling, which she claims will help city departments and outreach workers do their jobs more effectively. The mayor added that people who refuse help or who already have shelter will no longer be “allowed to camp on our streets.”
In Sacramento, Mayor Darrell Steinberg has similarly struggled to curb homelessness and improve the city’s deteriorating street conditions. In a statement after the decision, Steinberg said Homelessness dropped by 41% Between 2022 and 2024, “our strategy is to combine more shelters, housing and services, while emphasizing that people cannot live in large camps and violate ordinances that protect sidewalks, parks and other important places.”
“This court decision should not change our balanced, compassionate approach,” Steinberg said.
