Supreme Court to Consider How Far Cities Can Police Homelessness

The Supreme Court will consider on Monday how far cities and states can go to police homelessness, in a case that could have profound implications for how the country addresses an escalating crisis.

The case reflects a broader fight over regulating homelessness and the complexity of balancing the civil rights of homeless people with concerns about health and safety in public spaces.

The issue has united people across the political spectrum, with some leaders of left-leaning cities and states joining with conservative groups to urge the justices to clarify the extent of their legal authority in clearing encampments that have proliferated across the West in recent years.

The dispute centers on Grants Pass, a city of about 40,000 in southern Oregon that, through a series of overlapping ordinances, outlawed sleeping and camping with any kind of bedding in public spaces. The question before the justices is whether those laws went so far that they punished people for being homeless and violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

A group of homeless residents is challenging the city’s enforcement of the ordinances as unconstitutional, arguing that they are involuntarily homeless in the city because there are not shelter beds available and that the city may not punish them without offering shelter.

City officials in Grants Pass counter that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Eighth Amendment. They warn that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would fuel homeless encampments across the country and hamstring the ability of local governments to respond.