The Supreme Court will hear a case that could transform U.S. homelessness policy. The case is the most significant legal challenge to the rights of homeless people in decades. The ruling will shape how cities respond to tent encampments, reports Vox.com. Four years ago, the court declined to hear a similar challenge. Since then, the crisis of unsheltered homelessness has grown more severe, municipal backlash to court rulings that have limited cities’ response has grown more organized, and what to do about people living in tents has become an urgent political issue. The case of Grants Pass, OR v. Johnson is a challenge to a 2018 federal class action suit by three people who argued that Grants Pass illegally punished them for being involuntarily homeless. The plaintiffs noted the lack of affordable housing and homeless shelters, and blasted Grants Pass’s arguments that unhoused people could simply leave and go elsewhere.
In 2022, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the homeless plaintiffs. The same court had issued a landmark ruling four years earlier that said people without housing can’t be punished for sleeping or camping outside on public property if there are no adequate shelter alternatives available.
That decision, has fundamentally shaped cities’ response to the homelessness crisis, especially in the nine Western states in the Ninth Circuit, where 42 percent of the U.S. homeless population now lives.
Leaders from dozens of cities and states — both liberal and conservative — have been hoping the US Supreme Court would overturn the Ninth Circuit decisions, which they claim were incorrectly decided and leave governments ill-equipped to manage their communities. Many groups representing the rights of homeless people say there’s no reason for the high court to reconsider the rulings as there’s no clear disagreement among circuit courts to resolve.Â