Checkpoint: What’s The Point Of Finning The Homeless?

NBC News

This summer the Supreme Court is expected to deliver a ruling on a case cutting into one of America’s most pressing issues, homelessness and housing. The case City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson concerns whether ordinances in the town that criminalize the homeless are constitutions. Fundamentally, however, the case goes beyond that and into whether or not our government structures can legally discriminate against a class of people based on their economic status.

Grants Pass, Oregon is a small city with a population of about 38,000 people and an estimated 600 people experiencing homelessness on any given day. In 2013, the city government elected to ramp up enforcement of laws that ban the use of blankets, pillows, and cardboard boxes while sleeping in the city --- so-called “camping bans.”

These camping bans impose a $295 fine for violations of the city’s rules. That fine increases to $500 if it is left unpaid and repeated citations are caused, according to the city, for police to order any individual from the city’s property. A violation of such a police order carries with it a penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine.

Previous cases involving similar situations have resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that bans like the one at Grants Pass are cruel and unusual punishment and that criminalizing sleeping or sitting outside violated the Eighth Amendment when people do not have access to shelter. Understanding this precedent, the unhoused people who brought the case argued that the Grants Pass rule was unconstitutional.

The courts have had varying opinions on the issue as it has percolated through the Ninth Circuit. The district court that heard the case at trial agreed with the people who brought the case, ruling that the bans were unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit panel that heard the case upheld the lower court decision, albeit with a split panel. When the city requested a ruling from the full panel, the circuit court declined to revisit the case. While the Supreme Court has previously ruled in favor of people like the homeless Grants Pass residents who brought the case, the current Court has shown an appetite for overturning precedent.

The core of the precedent that the Supreme Court is being asked to reconsider was espoused in the 9th Circuit’s ruling on Martin v. City of Boise. In the case, the circuit court ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish someone simply for their status in society, i.e. being homeless, and that it was also unconstitutional to punish someone for an “unavoidable consequence of being homeless.”