California and Western cities can enforce laws restricting homeless encampments on sidewalks and other public property, the Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The justices disagreed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and ruled that city officials barring homeless people from sleeping on the streets or in parks was not “cruel and unusual” punishment.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix are among two dozen government and business groups urging the high court to hear an appeal in Grants Pass v. Johnson and overturn the 9th Circuit ruling.
While Newsom and others welcomed the ruling, it has been a contentious topic that divides the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party from progressives.
How will this ruling change the way California officials handle homeless encampments?
The Ninth Circuit, whose jurisdiction covers nine Western states, recognized constitutional protections for homeless people and homeless people. It remains the only federal appeals court in the country to do so.
In a series of rulings, the court found that cities violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment when police arrest or fine people who cannot obtain asylum.
The Supreme Court ruling is a major victory for Western city officials and a setback for homeless rights advocates. Since 2018, advocates have won rulings from the Ninth Circuit that found it unconstitutional to target anti-camping laws against people who are homeless and have nowhere to sleep.
While the decision does not require cities to take stronger enforcement action against homeless people, it will allow some to do so.
Should it really be up to local governments to decide how to deal with this issue?
Yes.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote that people disagree about which policy response is best. Cities may try one set of approaches but later discover that another works better, and may find that some responses work better for some neighborhoods than others.
“But in our democracy, that’s their right,” he added.
“Homelessness is complex,” he wrote. “The causes are many. So may the public policy responses needed to address the problem. Ultimately, the question raised by this case is whether the Eighth Amendment gives federal judges the primary responsibility to evaluate those causes and formulate those responses. It is not .
Newsom said in a statement that the ruling gives state and local officials “clear authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets.”
“This decision removes legal ambiguity that has tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to take common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities,” he said.
What’s the view like from Los Angeles City Hall?
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass slammed the Supreme Court ruling, calling it “disappointing” and arguing it should not be used to jail homeless residents or herd them from one city to another .
Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness on her first day in office in December and said the ruling would not change her approach to the crisis, which has focused primarily on removing homeless Angelenos from homelessness. Encampments were moved to hotels, motels and other forms of temporary accommodation.
Bass said in a statement that arresting homeless people or removing them from a community and into another city “costs taxpayers more than actually solving the problem.”
“The only way to solve this crisis is to keep people indoors and provide housing and support services,” she said. “In the City of Los Angeles, we will continue the approach that helped thousands more Los Angeles residents last year than the year before. people.”
Bass will make homelessness a top priority when he takes office in December 2022.
Inside Safe is billed as a voluntary program where outreach workers give homeless residents the option of moving indoors. However, the city also has a law, Municipal Code 41.18, that prohibits homeless people from sleeping or pitching tents in certain locations.
Under the law, homeless people are placed on the list if they set up tents within 500 feet of a school or day care center. It also bans campsites within two feet of a fire hydrant, five feet of a doorway or 10 feet of a driveway.
City law also prohibits encampments from blocking wheelchair access. It also allows city councils to designate certain “sensitive” areas, such as libraries, senior centers and highway overpasses, as off-limits to encampments.
What are officials in other cities saying?
Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said in a phone interview that the high court “finally made a good ruling” and said the city plans to be “more aggressive.” Paris added that he was not concerned about “proper encampments,” but was concerned about those “camping next to neighborhoods, next to shopping malls.”
“We’re going to move them very quickly,” he said. He added that the city has a “state-of-the-art homeless shelter” with beds available.
“Granted, our problem is different than downtown Los Angeles because we have 96 square miles of land, but only a third of it is developed. These people can camp in a lot of places, not necessarily in our front yards,” Pa Reese said. “That may not always be the case in Los Angeles, where you don’t have a lot of options.”
He added, “This is not an invitation for them to send homeless people to us.”
Paris agreed with Gorsuch that the decision should be in the hands of city officials, saying, “That’s called democracy.”
“This is a local government decision,” he said. “It would be a lot easier if the federal government stayed out of most of the decisions we have to make.”
In San Diego, one of the cities urging the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, Mayor Todd Gloria said the ruling “provides much-needed clarity on how the city enforces laws against unsafe encampments.”
However, he added, “This does not change our strategy for homeless people.”
“It’s clear that the 1,000 new shelters we’ve added over the past three years are working to reduce street homelessness, and we intend to continue to seek more beds,” he said in a statement.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed welcomed the Supreme Court’s review of the case, saying it comes amid broader efforts to combat crime and homelessness in the city over the past year. A decision that “will help cities like San Francisco better manage our public spaces” effectively and efficiently.
Breed has long lamented that even as the city devotes more resources to temporary housing and treatment services, people on the streets are often denied shelter.
An estimated 8,323 people are homeless in San Francisco, a city of about 808,000 people. The growing number of tents and visible homelessness in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin or South of Market has become a focal point in Breed’s uphill battle for re-election this November against four other serious challengers, including two Centrist candidates who have built their campaigns largely on blaming Breed for worsening street conditions.
“San Francisco has made significant investments in housing and housing, and we will continue to lead with the services provided by hard-working city employees,” Breed said in a prepared statement. “But too often these proposals 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 light of the ruling, which she claimed will help city departments and outreach workers do their jobs more efficiently. The mayor said those who refuse help or already have shelter will no longer be “allowed to camp on our streets.”
In Sacramento, Mayor Leal Steinberg has similarly worked to control homelessness and alleviate deteriorating conditions on downtown streets. In a statement after the ruling, Steinberg said the homeless population dropped 41% between 2022 and 2024 “due to our strategy of combining more shelters, housing and services while insisting that people cannot Even if you live in a large campground, you cannot violate regulations protecting sidewalks and parks.
“This court ruling should not change our balanced, compassionate approach,” Steinberg said.
