As West Coast Cities Descend Into Squalor, Supreme Court Will Weigh Whether Homeless Tents Can Be Removed
The case will challenge lower court rulings that ‘impose a one-size-fits-all rule and make it impossible for the government to treat individual cases on an individual basis,’ one observer tells the Sun.
Since 2018, a federal appeals court has prevented West Coast cities from arresting homeless people for camping on public land in the absence of available shelter beds — ruling that doing so is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.
A small city in Oregon, Grants Pass, is taking the issue to the Supreme Court next week, arguing that the past six years show a clear track record of “sprawling encampments, rising deaths, and widespread harms to the community, as localities are forced to surrender their public spaces” to homeless encampments often overrun by rampant crime, drug use, and disease.
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