Supreme Court to Hear Case on Public Sleeping Ban

The case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson addresses a series of bans enacted by the city of Grants Pass, Oregon. The restrictions prohibit people from sleeping in public places using bedding, sleeping bags, cardboard boxes, or other temporary shelter.

For initial offenses, the city assesses fines of up to several hundred dollars. After repeat offenses, people can be banned from the city and criminally charged if they come back. It’s estimated that between 50 and 600 people in the small city in southern Oregon are involuntarily unhoused, with insufficient shelter beds to accommodate all of these people.  

Judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over nine states in the western U.S., determined in 2022 that the Grants Pass restrictions on sleeping outside were excessively harsh.   On April 22, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments on whether or not it should uphold this decision.

A Supreme Court decision could set a precedent for other situations, as the case hinges on the legal distinction between the status of being homeless and the act of camping in public. 

In a similar 2018 case, Martin v. City of Boise, the 9th Circuit ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish someone for sleeping in public if a municipality has failed to provide sufficient shelter options for its homeless population. In the Boise case — which the Supreme Court declined to hear on appeal   — the circuit judges invoked the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. As sleeping is a human need, the circuit judges ruled, someone with nowhere else to sleep should be allowed to sleep in public.

The Grants Pass laws do allow for sleeping outside without blankets or other protection from the elements. But the 9th Circuit ruled that when cold winter temperatures make it impossible to sleep outside without blankets, the laws don’t leave any legal margin for people experiencing homelessness to sleep safely. As a result, the judges ruled, the law amounts to a ban on being “involuntarily homeless,” which they deemed to be unconstitutional based on legal precedent because it represents persecution for a person’s status.

Attorneys for the city of Grants Pass maintain that the 9th Circuit misread the Eighth Amendment as it applies to the city’s municipal code. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, the attorneys argue that the city’s laws aren’t based on a person’s status of being homeless. “This case concerns generally applicable prohibitions against the act of camping on public property—not any status crime,” the brief reads.

The Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments Monday in a case that could have far-reaching implications for the enforcement of public sleeping bans nationwide.