Today at the U.S. Supreme Court:
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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 23–175
CITY OF GRANTS PASS, OREGON, PETITIONER v.
GLORIA JOHNSON, ET AL., ON BEHALF
OF THEMSELVES AND ALL OTHERS
SIMILARLY SITUATED
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[June 28, 2024]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option. The City of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional. Punishing people for their status is “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment. See Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962).
Homelessness is a reality for too many Americans. On any given night, over half a million people across the country lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. Many do not have access to shelters and are left to sleep in cars, sidewalks, parks, and other public places. They experience homelessness due to complex and interconnected issues, including crippling debt and stagnant wages; domestic and sexual abuse; physical and psychiatric disabilities; and rising housing costs coupled with declining affordable housing options.
It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles. Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested. The Constitution provides a baseline of rights for all Americans rich and poor, housed and unhoused. This Court must safeguard those rights even when, and perhaps especially when, doing so is uncomfortable or unpopular. Otherwise, “the words of the Constitution become little more than good advice.” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 104 (1958) (plurality opinion).
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Grants Pass’s Ordinances criminalize being homeless. The status of being homeless (lacking available shelter) is defined by the very behavior singled out for punishment (sleeping outside). The majority protests that the Ordinances “do not criminalize mere status.” Ante, at 21. Saying so does not make it so. Every shred of evidence points he other way. The Ordinances’ purpose, text, and enforcement confirm that they target status, not conduct. For someone with no available shelter, the only way to comply with the Ordinances is to leave Grants Pass altogether.
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Next consider the text. The Ordinances by their terms single out homeless people. They define “campsite” as “any place where bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes” is placed “for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.” §5.61.010. The majority claims that it “makes no difference whether the charged defendant is homeless.” Ante, at 20. Yet the Ordinances do not apply unless bedding is placed to maintain a temporary place to live. Thus, “what separates prohibited conduct from permissible conduct is a person’s intent to ‘live’ in public spaces. Infants napping in strollers, Sunday afternoon picnickers, and nighttime stargazers may all engage in the same conduct of bringing blankets to public spaces [and sleeping], but they are exempt from punishment because they have a separate ‘place to live’ to which they presumably intend to return.” Brief for Criminal Law and Punishment Scholars as Amici Curiae 12
Put another way, the Ordinances single out for punishment the activities that define the status of being homeless…
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….The best the majority can muster is the following tautology: The Ordinances criminalize conduct, not pure status, because they apply to conduct, not status.
The flaw in this conclusion is evident. The majority countenances the criminalization of status as long as the City tacks on an essential bodily function—blinking, sleeping, eating, or breathing. That is just another way to ban the person….
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The majority proclaims, with no citation, that “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.” Ante, at 20. That describes a fantasy. In reality, the deputy chief of police operations acknowledged that he was not aware of “any non-homeless person ever getting a ticket for illegal camping in Grants Pass.” …
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I remain hopeful that our society will come together “to address the complexities of the homelessness challenge facing the most vulnerable among us.” Ante, at 34. That responsibility is shared by those vulnerable populations, the States and cities in which they reside, and each and every one of us. “It is only after we begin to see a street as our street, a public park as our park, a school as our school, that we can become engaged citizens, dedicating our time and resources for worthwhile causes.” M. Desmond, Evicted: Property and Profit in the American City 294 (2016).
This Court, too, has a role to play in faithfully enforcing the Constitution to prohibit punishing the very existence of those without shelter. I remain hopeful that someday in the near future, this Court will play its role in safeguarding constitutional liberties for the most vulnerable among us. Because the Court today abdicates that role, I respectfully dissent.
The U.S. Supreme Court has told us what we are. All that’s left is to haggle over the price.
