The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it has granted certiorari in a case which challenges the legality of cities banning or heavily restricting encampments of unhoused people on public land. The case, known as City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, aligns a discussion around the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The case centres around several parts of the Grants Pass Municipal Code, which include anti-sleeping, camping and park exclusion ordinances. The plaintiffs, several unhoused individuals, argue that the current language of the municipal code criminalizes their day-to-day survival, as Grants Pass offers no U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) approved shelters for unhoused people.
In 2018, these unhoused individuals initiated the case, on behalf of the “involuntarily homeless” residents of Grants Pass. In 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon Medford Division ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, stating that the municipal code violated the 8th Amendment.
Grants Pass appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which again ruled largely in favour of the plaintiffs in 2022, later amending the decision in 2023 while still largely ruling in favour of the plaintiffs. Grants Pass then petitioned for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, looking to overturn a key precedential case upon which prior rulings were based, known as Martin v. City of Boise.
Meanwhile, cities across the U.S. have begun to crackdown on unhoused individuals establishing encampments on public land. In 2021, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed an anti-camping ordinance into law leading to the eviction of a large encampment in Echo Park.
Despite early promises of housing solutions for the camp’s residents, later reports found that only 17 of 183 evicted had been placed in permanent housing. In parallel, both the City of Los Angeles and Governor Newsom have filed amicus briefs in support of the city of Grants Pass. Similar raids and evictions have been observed occurring in encampments across the U.S.
Findings from HUD’s 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report reveal that homelessness has increased across the U.S. by 12% since 2022. The report estimates that at least 40% of people experiencing homelessness are forced to live in uninhabitable places, such as public parks and sidewalks. Unhoused demographics are disproportionately constituted of Black, Hispanic, Latino, and Indigenous people, with a 7% increase in veterans experiencing homelessness since 2022.