The United States Supreme Court decided on Friday that municipal authorities They can prohibit homeless people from sleeping outdoors in areas of the west coast of the country where there is a lack of shelter space.
The case is the most important to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes at a time when a growing number of people in the United States He does not have a permanent place to live.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that found that The ban on sleeping outdoors amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
A complex issue
The majority concluded that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition does not extend to a ban on sleeping outdoors.
“It is a matter of the homeless it’s complex“Its causes are many. So too may be the public policy responses needed to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on behalf of the majority.
“A handful of federal judges cannot even begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom of the American people when deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social issue like homelessness.”
He suggested that people who have no choice but to sleep outdoors could raise it as a “necessity defense” if they receive a fine or other punishment for violating a camping ban.
A bipartisan group of leaders had argued that the ruling made it more difficult for them to manage outdoor camps encroaching on sidewalks and other public spaces in nine Western states. That includes California, which is home to a third of the country’s homeless population.
“Cities across the West report that the Ninth Circuit’s inadvertent test has created intolerable uncertainty for them,” Gorsuch wrote.
Criminalize homelessness
Homeless advocates, on the other hand, said that Allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep will criminalize homelessness and will ultimately worsen the crisis. Cities had been allowed to regulate camping, but they could not prevent people from sleeping outdoors.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reading from the bench a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues.
“Punishing people for their status is ‘cruel and unusual’ under the Eighth Amendment,” Sotomayor wrote in the document. “It is very possible, even likely, that these and other similar ordinances will face more days in court.”
