Crucial, not cruel and unusual: The Supreme Court weighs homelessness regulations

Homeless tents under the 101 Freeway on Hayvenhurst Ave in Encino on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. To address homelessness, cities around California and the US have tried to implement bans on camping on public property. But legal challenges have paused enforcement, and the Supreme Court is poised to rule in. At stake is the ability of public officials to craft nuanced policies that address homelessness.

The class action lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of anti-camping ordinances in a small Oregon town, but the impact of the Justices’ ruling will be especially strong here in California. More thanargue that camping bans effectively criminalize homelessness, public officials contend that these ordinances are a critical tool to address public safety issues that arise from homeless encampments.

San Francisco and Sacramento, like Grants Pass, have been under injunctions from federal courts that prevent or delay enforcement of anti-camping laws based on the 2018decision. That ruling asserts that arresting or citing people for sleeping on public property violates the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause if the individuals have nowhere else to go.

In a joint amicus brief, the California Police Chiefs Association and others wrote, “ make it nearly impossible for law enforcement to leverage criminal and civil penalties” to usher homeless people into programs like drug diversion courts. These programs have been shown to, but court injunctions keep unsheltered individuals on the streets, living in squalid conditions and leading to spillover public safety issues.will be a monumental one for California officials struggling to end homelessness.

The court should give the power to address homelessness and maintain public safety back to the municipalities who deal with these issues firsthand, rather than constitutionalizing a right to vagrancy from the bench.is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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