The United States Supreme Court decided on Friday that municipal authorities They can prohibit homeless people from sleeping outdoors in areas of the country’s west coast where shelter space is lacking.
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 banning outdoor sleeping amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
A complex topic
The majority concluded that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition does not extend to the prohibition on sleeping outdoors.
“It is a matter of the homeless It is complex. Its causes are many. So may the public policy responses necessary to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for 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 that invade 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 involuntary testing has left them with intolerable uncertainty,” 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 make the crisis worse. Cities had been allowed to regulate encampments, but they could not stop 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.”
