Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Sleeping Outdoors in Homelessness Case

Link to the actual opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf

> "Still, no one has asked us to reconsider Robinson. Nor do we see any need to do so today. Whatever its persuasive force as an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, it cannot sustain the Ninth Circuit’s course since Martin."

> "Public camping ordinances like those before us are nothing like the law at issue in Robinson. Rather than criminalize mere status, Grants Pass forbids actions like “occupy[ing] a campsite” on public property “for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live. Under the city’s laws, it makes no difference whether the charged defendant is homeless, a backpacker on vacation passing through town, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.”

The argument is pretty interesting. You can't make something that is normally illegal legal just because of some trait of the person. If a park has posted hours or parking rules, you can't ask someone for proof they don't have a home to determine they broke the rules or not. Which is different than rounding up all of the homeless legally using the space during the day and telling them they have to leave.

They do have a problem with the 9th circuit's interpretation of the Eight Amendment. In the court's view, the eight amendment is about protecting you from unjust punishments. But you can't use that argument to determine if something is a crime.

The court's previous ruling on this was that you couldn't make "being homeless" illegal, and so laws against things like sleeping in the park were only valid if there was a reasonable alternative available. Generally this meant that the municipality needed to provide homeless shelters.

I can't say that I like this outcome, since now cities are motivated to just run the homeless out of town rather than helping them in any way.

I really don't like this ruling. My reasoning is that a public park, for instance, is public property available for use to everyone. Anywhere you go will either be private, or public property. The homeless cannot sleep on private land, fine, but it's coldly unreasonable to say they cannot sleep in the park at night. During the day, ok, move along, I can accept that but.. The homeless are humans and we should stop treating them as a general nuisance. Any one of us could just as easily find ourselves homeless, falling from great success.

https://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-fail/

This will lead to a game of 'homeless hot potato' among neighborhoods in larger cities as each pass ordinances that ban various 'homeless activities' in their borders.

I disagree with this ruling, but something that really, really pissed me off is this paragraph:

"The town had no homeless shelter, aside from one run by a religious organization that required, among other rules, attendance at Christian services."

Am I the only one that thinks it's wrong to require someone to attend a church to receive services from that church? I go to church and we will try to help anyone we can without any preconditions. Mandatory attendance just seems… disrespectful of that persons own religious beliefs, and unchristian.

What a nice ruling, showing so much compassion, generosity and common sense, that it would make a decent Phillip K Dick Story.

This is… surprising. Evidently you are ok if you are awake, but as soon as you fall asleep you can be arrested? You can only stay awake so long. This seems against human nature.

Better not take a nap after your summer picnic!