On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to activists and city officials across the western United States who are trying to reduce the homeless tents pitched all over their cities.
The Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal of the Ninth Circuit’s decision last year that ruled prosecuting or fining homeless people for sleeping on public property violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment when the homeless had no access to a shelter, as Fox News reports. As the City-Journal points out, the decision of the Supreme Court is the latest round in a fight that has been going on in Boise, Idaho for ten years. In 2009, a few homeless people sued Boise saying that the city did not have the right to get them off the streets if they had no other place to go. The first court ruled for the city, but then the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision.
In the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, it acknowledged that two of the six homeless plaintiffs had objected to the “overall religious atmosphere of the River of Life shelter, including the Christian messaging on the shelter’s intake form and the Christian iconography on the shelter walls.” The Ninth Circuit noted, “We hold only that ‘so long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in [a jurisdiction] than the number of available beds [in shelters],’ the jurisdiction cannot prosecute homeless individuals for ‘involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public.’”
In the case, City of Idaho v. Martin, one brief to the Supreme Court submitted by a group of associations noted:
The inter-circuit inconsistencies fostered by Martin and the ambiguous language used by the Ninth Circuit has flummoxed local governments throughout the country—which in turn has had a profoundly troubling impact on homeless and housed alike. As cities withdraw services, public safety, health, and welfare declines rapidly. When citizens are left in chaos, compassion and empathy begin to erode. This Court’s intervention is necessary to resolve the conflict among circuits and clarify the role local government is permitted to take to ensure the safety of all its citizens.
In another brief submitted by the City of Los Angeles, it stated:
The City agrees with a central tenet of Boise – that no individual should be susceptible to punishment for sleeping on the sidewalk at night if no alternative shelter is available. But Boise’s rationale sweeps too broadly, and the internally inconsistent Opinion is unclear. By raising more issues than it resolves, the decision leaves jurisdictions like Los Angeles without the certainty necessary to balance intensely competing interests without risking costly and time-consuming litigation.
The attorneys representing Boise wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court, “The Ninth Circuit’s decision misapplies and radically expands this Court’s precedent, creates conflicts with five other circuit or state supreme courts, and stretches the Eighth Amendment beyond recognition. In doing so, it eliminates the ability of state and local governments to protect the health and safety of their residents.”
Fox News noted, “Los Angeles alone saw a 16 percent increase in its homeless population over last year – soaring to more than 36,000 people living on the streets … Overall in the bigger Los Angeles County, the homeless population rose 12 percent compared with last year’s count, bringing the total population to almost 59,000.
Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer supported Boise’s petition and wondered if Los Angeles needed to provide shelter for all 36,000 homeless individuals “before taking enforcement action against a single unsheltered individual who refuses an available shelter bed in one of the city’s regional shelters, just because shelters at the opposite end of the city are full,” according to the Los Angeles Times.