Cultural Implications of Grant's Pass V. Johnson

Amidst the political tumult of 2024, a Supreme Court decision with potentially broad implications for one of the nation’s foremost political issues flew under the radar. The Court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson enables the imposition of camping bans, which are cruel policies that harm homeless people for simply trying to survive. The ruling reflects a political and cultural indifference to the needs and dignity of the homeless. 

Grants Pass addresses whether one has the right to sleep or camp outdoors. In 2018, Martin v. Boise determined municipal laws banning sleeping in public spaces are unconstitutional if the city lacked enough shelter beds to hold all homeless residents. Martin was brought by six homeless plaintiffs suing the city of Boise over previous citations under an anti-camping ordinance meant to ban residents from sleeping outdoors. While the city of Boise argued it had a right to impose such ordinances, the plaintiffs successfully argued it violated their rights to sleep when there was inadequate shelter space in the city. The Ninth Circuit Court decided that the camping ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment as a cruel and unusual punishment (Berzon 2018, 3). This led to a wave of homeless plaintiffs suing their city after being arrested, fined, or jailed for sleeping outdoors. 

One case, in Grants Pass, Oregon, reached the Supreme Court. Grants Pass had an ordinance banning camping on public property under certain conditions. However, the city only had 138 available shelter beds despite a homeless population of about 600. Two homeless plaintiffs sued the city over the ordinance and argued that it violated their Eighth Amendment rights, citing Martin. The defendant, the city of Grants Pass, argued that they were not obligated to ensure homeless residents had available shelter beds and that a camping ban was an appropriate policy measure to combat homelessness. 

The Supreme Court sided with the defendant. The majority opinion, written by Justice Gorsuch, overturned the ruling in Martin, arguing it was an overbroad interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. Gorsuch claimed that the Eighth Amendment can only apply to a punishment, not an act. He referenced the precedent of Robinson v. California, which established that while criminalizing addiction was unconstitutional, criminalizing the act of illicit substance use was not. This precedent was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Powell V. Texas in 1972. 

However, this reasoning is flawed, something Justice Sotomayor highlighted in her dissent. She writes, “Grants Pass’s Ordinances criminalize[s] being homeless. The status of being homeless (lacking available shelter) is defined by the very behavior singled out for punishment (sleeping outside)” (Sotomayor 2024, 13). If being homeless forces someone to sleep outside, then sleeping outside is an inherent aspect of being homeless. Therefore, criminalizing the act of sleeping outside necessarily criminalizes the condition of homelessness. The majority’s argument that criminalizing the former does not entail criminalizing the latter is invalid. 

Also, contrary to the Court’s argument, the ruling disproportionately discriminates against homeless individuals. Gorsuch is careful to point out that Grants Pass’s camping ordinance does not exclusively apply to homeless individuals. However, the deputy police chief of Grant’s Pass was not aware of “any non-homeless person getting a ticket for illegal camping.” While the law broadly criminalizes sleeping outside with the intent of “maintaining a temporary place to live,” it primarily impacts individuals experiencing homelessness (Sotomayor 2024, 18).

Ordinances like the one in Grants Pass are often explicitly designed only to harm homeless individuals. The court’s decision to enable these ordinances is a mistake not just because the abstract legal reasoning is flawed, but because implementing these ordinances will make the lives of homeless people far more difficult. 

These discriminatory policies and the Grants Pass decision exemplify a harmful cultural problem—there is no acceptable way to be homeless. As Sotomayor points out in her dissent, “[T]he only way to comply with the Ordinances is to leave Grants Pass altogether” (Sotomayor 2024, 13). Under these ordinances, homeless residents have only two legal options: don’t sleep or leave. Allowing states to prohibit homeless individuals from sleeping outdoors, even when there is nowhere else to sleep, is counterproductive because it enables a perpetually procrastinatory approach to the problem. 

These are not solutions. We seem to only want the homeless out of sight so we don’t have to think about the difficult changes needed to truly remediate the issue. This ruling is emblematic of a nation walking past our neighbors on the street, preferring to ignore their existence rather than devote thought, time, and energy to genuine change. When simply pushing the homeless out of town becomes a viable solution, public discourse on the issue has shifted from how to get people in housing to how to get people out of our sight. 

There is no better example of this disregard than when Gorsuch wonders “whether Martin requires cities to tolerate other acts no less ‘attendant [to] survival’ than sleeping, such as starting fires to cook food and ‘public urination [and] defecation” (Gorsuch 2024 29). This line of thinking assumes that permitting public defecation is absurd, but why is it absurd? Where is someone with no home and no access to bathrooms supposed to defecate? Gorsuch’s argument demeans homeless individuals by focusing on their most unpleasant bodily functions. This apathy is a defense mechanism for a ruling that enables policies to further dehumanize homeless individuals by criminalizing essential bodily functions. We deny homeless individuals the space to survive and punish them when how they survive inconveniences others. The Grants Pass ruling asks for the impossible; it asks homeless people not to be seen, even when there is no shelter to hide behind.

References:

Grant’s Pass v. Johnson, 23-175 US 603 (2024) 

Martin v. Boise, 15-35845 9th Circuit (2018)