This is an incredible blow to those within the US.
Municipalities can now effectively make being homeless illegal.
They've done this in the past, right. But this SCOTUS decision means that the federal govt will not step in to stop local cities from hurting homeless folks.
It means we have to act locally and every town will be different.
It's an incredibly disgusting decision.
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Summary of decision:
The Supreme Court decided on Friday that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors in West Coast areas where shelter space is lacking. The case is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live.
The case came from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which appealed a ruling striking down local ordinances that fined people $295 for sleeping outside after tents began crowding public parks. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the nine Western states, has held since 2018 that such bans violate the Eighth Amendment in areas where there aren’t enough shelter beds.
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Some background:
Obama's DOJ 2015:
“[i]t should be uncontroversial that punishing conduct that is a universal and unavoidable consequence of being human violates the Eighth Amendment. . . Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity—i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.”
Roberts' Court 2024:
The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
The opinion completely sidestepped the biologically required act of sleeping and focused on the actual fines imposed in enforcing the order not being cruel or unusual. The dissent mentions sleep as biologically needed and ties it back to the 8th Amendment.
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https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-homeless-camping-bans-506ac68dc069e3bf456c10fcedfa6bee
#solarPunk #mutualAid #shelter #homeless #homelessness #housing