WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the “cruel and unusual punishment clause” of the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit cities from enforcing “no sleeping in public” ordinances among the homeless, even if they have nowhere else to go.
Review the Grants Pass v Johnson Supreme Court ruling here.
The court’s decision reverses a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that punishing unhoused people for sleeping in public when they have no access to shelter violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The ACLU issued the following press release Friday in response:
“It is hard to imagine a starker example of excessive punishment than fining and jailing a person for the basic human act of sleeping,” said Scout Katovich, staff attorney in the Trone Center for Justice and Equality. “As Justice Sotomayor’s dissent powerfully acknowledged, sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. We cannot arrest our way out of homelessness, and we will continue litigating against cities that are emboldened by this decision to treat unhoused people as criminals.”
The court held that punishing a person for sleeping in public, even if they have no other option, punishes conduct, not status, and so Robinson v. California, which established that it is cruel and unusual to criminalize a person’s status, does not apply. The case, Grants Pass v. Johnson, originated from an Oregon city that passed ordinances barring people from sleeping outside in public using a blanket, pillow, or even a cardboard sheet to lie on. In Grants Pass, Oregon, unhoused people could be saddled with hundreds of dollars in fines and even jail time for sleeping outside, even though the city lacked enough shelter beds.
The American Civil Liberties Union submitted a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that punishing unhoused people for sleeping outside when they lack access to shelter violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. As the brief highlights, the original intent and meaning of the Eighth Amendment and its application in more than a century of Supreme Court cases make clear that the government cannot impose punishment that is disproportionate to the crime.
The brief goes on to argue that Robinson v. California, which ruled that criminalizing a person’s status is cruel and unusual punishment and was relied upon by the lower courts in Grants Pass, is consistent with this proportionality principle. Applying the same proportionality principle, the brief stated, punishing unhoused people for sleeping in public when they have no other choice violates the Eighth Amendment.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to effectively allow cities and towns to criminalize and dehumanize unhoused people may have devastating reverberations in New Hampshire,” said Devon Chaffee, executive director of the ACLU of New Hampshire. “Unhoused people deserve dignity, not criminalization for simply existing. We warn New Hampshire officials that local efforts to criminalize the unhoused may still violate the New Hampshire Constitution – and we urge them to exercise both restraint and humanity in addressing this vulnerable population going forward.”Grants Pass v. Johnson is a part of the ACLU’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket.