On June 28, 2024, the United States Supreme Court in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson[1] issued a landmark decision abrogating the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s opinion in Martin v. Boise.[2] Martin held that enforcing anti-camping laws violates an individual’s Eighth Amendment right prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment if those individuals lacked “access to alternative shelter.” In practice, the Ninth Circuit’s decision required municipalities to provide sufficient facilities to potentially accommodate local homeless populations before being able to legally enforce anti-camping laws. Martin led to significant confusion and conflict among lower courts as to its requirements and resulted in serious problems of administrability for state and local authorities, especially for municipalities with limited resources and relatively large homeless populations like the municipal petitioner in Grants Pass.
In Grants Pass, the Supreme Court instead holds that enforcing anti-camping laws does not violate the Eight Amendment. The Court reasons that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment generally concerns only the methods or kinds of punishment a government may impose after a criminal conviction. The Court long ago recognized an exception to this rule in that if a law operates to criminalize mere status, then the Eight Amendment’s proscriptions could enjoin such laws prior to conviction. This exception is exemplified by Robinson v. California,[3] where a California law made it illegal to be addicted to the use of narcotics. A fractured Court in Robinson held generally that such criminalization of mere status was unlawful under the Eighth Amendment because the challenged law there did not require the violator to have a requisite mens rea nor actus reus.
The ordinance at issue in Grants Pass, however, was held to not fall under the Robinson exception. The Court reasoned that public camping ordinances do not criminalize mere status; instead, they forbid actions, and the law applies to not just homeless individuals but others as well, including backpackers, vacationers, and students. The Court refuses to extend Robinson to apply to laws that proscribe acts that a defendant cannot help to undertake because it would force the Court to create something akin to a new insanity test in constitutional terms. This extension was granted under Martin, and the experiment failed, the Court notes, because instead of elected representatives creating policies, judges tried to resolve these matters from the bench.
The holding in Grants Pass signals a shift in power back to state and local legislators to craft and enforce laws addressing the homelessness crisis, and will likely result in significant policy changes at state and local levels throughout the Ninth Circuit.
Please contact Rutan if you have questions about Anti-Camping Laws, or their implications
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
[2] Martin v. Boise, 920 F.3d 584 (9th Cir. 2019).
[3] Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962).
