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## Supreme Court Weighs in on Homelessness Issue

Supreme Court justices expressed concern on Monday about punishing homeless people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go, while also struggling with how to ensure local and state leaders have the flexibility to deal with the growing number of unhoused individuals nationwide.

The court’s review of a set of Oregon anti-camping laws could lead to the most significant ruling on the rights of the unhoused in decades, with potentially sweeping implications for state capitals and city streets.

Throughout a more than two-hour argument, the justices seemed to divide along ideological lines with conservatives who make up the court’s majority suggesting that policymakers, and not judges, should be setting local rules for dealing with homeless people. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked the Biden administration’s lawyer: “Why would you think these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgments?”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also expressed concern about federal courts “micromanaging homeless policy.”

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked where people are supposed to sleep in a city that lacks sufficient shelter beds.

“Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion?” Sotomayor pressed. “Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleeping?”

The city’s lawyer, Theane Evangelis, defended the laws and emphasized the harm that can come from people living on the streets and in parks.

“When humans are living in those conditions, we think that that’s not compassionate and that there’s no dignity in that,” she said.

The Supreme Court agreed to intervene in the case after hearing pleas from an unlikely coalition that spanned the political spectrum, including liberal leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and officials in Republican-led states like Montana and Alabama. Their legal briefs described governments overwhelmed by the severity of the problem: More than 600,000 people are homeless nationwide, according to federal data, and nearly half sleep outside.

The case began in Grants Pass, after officials started strictly enforcing a set of measures that outlawed sleeping or camping in public spaces like parks and in parked cars, imposing fines ranging from $75 to $295. The penalties increased substantially when unpaid and could eventually result in jail time or a park ban.

Three homeless people — Debra Blake, Gloria Johnson, and John Logan — sued Grants Pass in 2018, saying the city, with a population of 40,000 people, was punishing them unconstitutionally “based on their status of being involuntarily homeless.” They cited the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

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But a majority of justices on Monday seemed unlikely to extend Eighth Amendment protections to homeless individuals without access to shelter. Several seemed to be looking for a more narrow middle ground, but it was not immediately clear what that would look like — an uncertainty that reflects the national debate over tackling the thorny problem of homelessness.

The one point that all of the justices and attorneys seemed to agree on: Solving homelessness is complicated.

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