The Rutherford Institute is challenging attempts by Oregon city officials in Grants Pass to prohibit sleeping and camping in public through the use of excessive fines and criminal trespass charges.
In pushing back against a nationwide trend in urban and suburban communities to criminalize homelessness, the Institute has joined the Fines and Fees Justice Center and Street Democracy in an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which argues that the City’s ordinances against sleeping and camping in public violate the Excessive Fines Clause and the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment.
The homeless, by far the most vulnerable in any community, have found themselves increasingly displaced and disadvantaged by laws that will only worsen their plight, said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. While we recognize the difficulties that public officials face in addressing the problems arising from homelessness, the use of excessive fines to penalize public sleeping is a counterproductive, cosmetic attempt to address homelessness that does nothing to resolve the underlying problems.
In 2013, following a discussion alluding to the need to make it uncomfortable enough for [homeless persons] in our city so they will want to move on down the road, officials in Grants Pass, Oregon, increased enforcement of anti-sleeping and anti-camping ordinances prohibiting homeless persons from using a blanket or a cardboard box for protection from the weather while sleeping within the City’s limits. The ordinances result in civil fines up to several hundred dollars per violation, and persons found to violate ordinances multiple times can be barred from all City property and subject to criminal prosecution for trespassing. Unfortunately, while the city sought to discourage vagrancy, it did nothing to address the source of the homeless problem. As a non-profit organization serving homeless people in the area reported, almost all of the homeless people in Grants Pass are involuntarily homeless. There is simply no place in Grants Pass for them to find affordable housing or shelter. They are not choosing to live on the street or in the woods.
In response to a class action lawsuit that was subsequently filed on behalf of all involuntarily homeless individuals living in Grants Pass, the district court found the ordinances to be unconstitutional but noted that the City could still limit camping or sleeping at certain times and places, limit the amount of bedding materials allowed, and pursue other options to prevent the erection of encampments that cause public health and safety concerns. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly affirmed, holding that it is unconstitutional to punish simply sleeping in public with rudimentary forms of protection against snow, frost, or rain if one has nowhere else to sleep. The City appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to weigh in on the issues.
