The unhoused are up next on the Supreme Court’s chopping block as they agreed to hear a decision made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that it is cruel and unusual punishment to deny the homeless a place to sleep. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling on Johnson v. City of Grants Pass has impacted how California addresses homelessness; complaints by California officials regarding this new ruling are unfounded and highlight the government’s cruel, unsympatheticness towards its own.
In light of this ruling, Gov. Newsom and city attorneys from several major cities that fall within the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, among others, have called for a restoration of their control over public areas that the homeless occupy. The briefs they filed yielded fruit as the Supreme Court announced they would hear the case. Petitioners claim that this ruling makes the law unclear whether the government has the right to remove homeless encampments when they refuse other temporary shelters.
There has been a lot of blame placed on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for California’s worsening homelessness and housing crisis. Newsom went as far as to say that “rulings from the bench have tied the hands of state and local governments to address this issue.” They claim their rulings have built a huge roadblock to offering these individuals the services they need and deserve. However, it’s unclear how this ruling is the squeaky wheel when California’s failure to address homelessness and the failure of Californians to care long predates 2022.
When government officials say they feel they no longer have the tools to address this issue, it’s plain to see that they mean they no longer have the tools needed to hide it. They mean that it is harder to make homelessness illegal and harder to criminalize poverty. The blame deflected onto the Ninth Circuit is a clear misplacement when the blame truly falls on years of failed policies and a lack of compassion.
The cases decided before this appellate court have not prevented local officials from addressing issues surrounding homelessness, including encampments. What Gov. Newsom is asking of the Supreme Court is permission to penalize the unhoused for a “collective government failure to provide affordable housing and adequate shelter across the state.” The state and many Californians have already decided that it’s easier to criminalize homelessness rather than actually address it.
The Supreme Court case will primarily focus on the Ninth Circuit’s assertion that these anti-camping and anti-sleeping laws, thinly veiled to target homeless populations, violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Punishing people for the unfortunate circumstance of being homeless is, sadly, not the first time that California law has made an effort to criminalize behavior that represents the symptoms of a problem. The Supreme Court ruled in Robinson v. California against the state of California and struck down a law that allowed Lawrence Robinson to be arrested for narcotics addiction, a disease, not a crime. It is cruel to arrest and prosecute people for being targets of a systemic problem. In fact, research indicates that enforcing these laws is only exacerbating the problem and causing irreparable harm.
While these individuals may not have the Constitutional right to camp in public parks and streets, the government certainly does not have a right to do greater harm in response by denying them the very, very least. Furthermore, beyond the Constitutional issues, this is a human rights issue at its core. Housing, shelter and basic safety are universal human rights that California has been trampling on for far too long. The inhumanity in state and federal government’s treatment of the unhoused makes it obvious that California officials need to find another way to do their job that doesn’t involve violations of basic decency.
The justice system has held, since Weems v. United States in 1910, that the Eighth Amendment “may acquire wider meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by humane justice.” This was reinforced and accepted in Trop v. Dulles, which established interpreting the amendment “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” a concept that the current Supreme Court appears to be unfamiliar with. The Highest Court in the land repeatedly makes case decisions that emphasize circumstances that characterized the late 1700s rather than a contemporary and reasonable standard of humanity.
There is little hope with the Supreme Court agreeing to hear this case as fear mounts that they will overrule the Ninth Circuit. The decision to strip down protections for the homeless is terrifyingly likely and will allow the homeless to be repeatedly victimized and targeted by the California government. It will vindicate legislators’ efforts nationwide to do the same, and the state of the nation will be worse for it.
