The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to examine whether an Oregon city can enforce a public camping ban on homeless individuals. This decision was part of a series of orders that were revealed following the justices’ closed-door conference earlier in the day, adding five new cases to the court’s merits docket.
In the case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the ruling stands to impact methods other cities employ to address their homelessness concerns. San Francisco, for instance, spent over $672 million during the last fiscal year to provide shelter and housing to people experiencing homelessness. The city has claimed to the justices in a “friend of the court” brief that its inability to enforce its laws “has made it more difficult to provide services” to such individuals.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco has struggled with a similar issue in recent years. In the case Martin v. City of Boise, the Court of Appeals held that punishing homeless individuals for public camping would contravene the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment if they did not have access to alternative shelter. In other words, a city cannot punish someone for their status – being homeless – nor can it penalize them for actions “that are an unavoidable consequence of being homeless.”
Subsequent to the decision in Martin, three individuals who were involuntarily homeless filed a federal lawsuit in Oregon against a public camping ban in Grants Pass, a southern Oregon city home to around 40,000 people. The district court concurred with them and prohibited the city from enforcing its ban during the day without 24 hours’ notice, including at night.
The city approached the Supreme Court in August, urging the justices for their perspective on the issue. The city argued that rulings by the 9th Circuit Court have resulted in a “judicial roadblock preventing a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments in the West.” It warned that the encampments had led to crime, fires, environmental damage, and a significant number of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets.
Apart from the homelessness issue, the justices will also consider a labor relations case brought by Starbucks. The company has come under fire for allegedly engaging in unfair labor practices in response widespread efforts by its workers to unionize. The primary question in Starbucks v. McKinney is which test courts should use to assess requests from the National Labor Relations Board for injunctions under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act.
Among other cases granted review, the court will relook an issue regarding a lawsuit eligibility for a federal civil rights claim in Williams v. Washington, and an issue on visa denial for a non-citizen spouse of a U.S. citizen in Department of State v. Munoz.
It is likely that these cases added to the docket will be argued in late April, with decisions expected to be made by summer. For a more detailed review of these cases, please visit the original article here.