Supreme Court Allows Enforcement of Anticamping Laws

An Oregon city can arrest, fine and jail people for sleeping outdoors, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The case, Johnson v. Grants Pass, centers on the enforcement of ordinances that criminalize camping in public outdoor spaces, including sidewalks and streets.

Gloria Johnson and several other homeless people filed a class action suit against the city, arguing that the ordinances violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The city of Grants Pass, Ore., argued that the imposition of fines and short jail sentences is neither cruel nor unusual, and that the laws applied equally to both homeless and housed individuals.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Grants Pass, overturning the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and clearing the way for the city to continue enforcing its ordinances. The court reasoned that the historical context of the Eighth Amendment's restriction on cruel and unusual punishment shows the founders intended for cruelty to mean purposefully causing terror, pain or disgrace and unusual to mean that a punishment has long fallen out of use, such as pillorying. Accordingly, the court said the Eighth Amendment was a poor foundation upon which to make Johnson's case.

At oral argument, Johnson asserted that the ordinances were unconstitutional because they criminalized the status of homelessness, which is prohibited under Supreme Court precedent. The court dispatched this argument by noting that anyone sleeping outdoors, regardless of housing status, could be prosecuted, so the precedent did not apply.

A dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan argued that the majority got it wrong.

"The Eighth Amendment prohibits punishing homelessness by criminalizing sleeping outside when an individual has nowhere else to go," Sotomayor wrote.

She disputed the majority's assertion that the ordinances did not criminalize the status of homelessness and expressed disappointment in the court's decision, stating it "has a role to play in enforcing the Constitution to prohibit punishing the very existence of those without shelter." Sotomayor ended her dissent with the accusation that the majority abdicated its role to safeguard constitutional liberties.

Nicole Ezeh is an associate legislative director in NCSL's State-Federal Relations Division.