A bipartisan coalition of state governments, liberal cities, and free-market groups across the country is petitioning the Supreme Court to strike down court rulings that have bedeviled cities’ efforts to clear out dangerous and unsanitary homeless encampments. Should the court act in the coalition’s favor, cities could finally take action against the camps marked by filth, open-air drug use, and inflated crime.

The groups are extending support to a small Oregon city, Grants Pass, which is trying to revive its camping ban after a 2022 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, which built on precedent from a 2018 decision in the same court for Martin v. Boise. 

The court ruled that if there aren’t available shelter beds, being homeless is “involuntary,” and the city can’t legally arrest those individuals who are living and sleeping in tents on public property. The cases are cited by the Department of Justice as it directs cities to “change policies that criminalize behaviors associated with homelessness.”

In 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to the Martin case. If the court reconsiders, its decision will have major ramifications for the estimated 582,000 homeless people across America, many of whom have been allowed to live indefinitely in tent encampments on city land.

“It’s imperative that the U.S. Supreme Court takes this case because these cases have really wreaked havoc with regard to the homelessness problem, particularly in the West,” the Goldwater Institute’s legal affairs vice president, Timothy Sandefur, tells the Sun.

The Goldwater Institute is a public policy think tank in Arizona and is one of the groups filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court. Phoenix is home to a large homeless encampment, known as “The Zone,” over which nearby home and business owners have successfully sued the city, demanding that it clear the encampment because of high crime numbers, drug use, and public health threats, as the Sun has reported. 

In the judge’s ruling to clear “The Zone,” he wrote that he “would respectfully urge the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Grants Pass ruling and, by extension, the Martin decision.” 

Both cases, “at least in theory, still allow the government to enforce laws against public camping, but the public officials use this as an excuse to not do anything,” Mr. Sandefur says.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that arresting people for sleeping in public when there aren’t sufficient shelter beds is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.

“That’s just not true,” Mr. Sandefur tells the Sun. “As we say in the brief, if I go to a bar and I get drunk and I drive home and I’m driving drunk, it’s not the government’s fault. It’s not involuntary on my part that I’m driving drunk just because the government didn’t buy me an Uber home.” 

In tent cities such as “The Zone,” the local government has used the Ninth Circuit cases to justify not taking action against the encampments. The victims aren’t just the homeless who “deserve better than to be left on the streets in 120-degree Phoenix summers,” but also the business and home owners in the area, who “don’t deserve to have their land and livelihoods ruined through a combination of bad legal reasoning and feckless irresponsibility,” the Goldwater Institute argues. 

In addition to Phoenix, cities in California, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, are grappling with a sharp increase in homelessness. Governor Newsom has filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to address and clarify what cities are allowed to do to legally clear encampments. 

The tent areas “foster dangerous and unhealthy conditions for those living in them and for communities around them,” Mr. Newsom’s brief says. Although he doesn’t take issue with the “narrow” Martin ruling, he says lower courts have interpreted it far too broadly. 

“This Court’s intervention is needed,” the governor’s brief states. “Our government officials are trapped, at risk of suit for taking action but also accountable for the consequences of inaction. Our communities will suffer for it.”

Mr. Newsom says the decisions stemming from the Ninth Circuit cases have “paralyzed” communities such as Santa Barbara, which tried to impose “a geographically and time-limited ban against sleeping only in the downtown area,” but was blocked by a district court. At Los Angeles, the governor notes, shelters had to meet “a long list of requirements” before the city could “enforce common-sense anti-camping laws.”