Supreme Court Justice Asks If City Can Kill Homeless People

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, during oral arguments in a homelessness case on Monday, asked if cities would be permitted to kill homeless people.

The Gloria Johnson v. Grants Pass case focuses on whether homeless people have a right to sleep outside. The Oregon city was sued by homeless people who said the government illegally banned sleeping bags, blankets, pillows and cardboard boxes to prevent them from sleeping on the streets, even as no other space or shelter was available.

In September 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals deemed the local law outlawing sleeping bags and other materials to be "cruel and unusual punishment" and therefore was in violation of the Constitution.

Brown Jackson asked attorney Theane D. Evangelis, who is representing Grants Pass, what the legal implications would be if the city decided to execute homeless people. Evangelis said it would be found to be "cruel and unusual punishment."

Justice Sonia Sotomayer then asked the attorney: "What about cities without compassion? Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves?" according to The Economist reporter Steven Mazie on X, formerly Twitter.

Sotomayer then said that cities can still enforce bans on defecation or fires in public, but it wouldn't be able to criminalize the bare act of sleeping in public, as the debate continued.

Depending on what the court rules, major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles might be impacted by the decision as they face high numbers of homelessness and have large areas occupied by people living on the street.

"There is a lot at stake here," Elizabeth Bowen, an associate professor and homelessness expert at the University at Buffalo, told Newsweek. "Criminalizing people who are homeless for activities that are legal to do inside a dwelling, such as sleeping, has a long history in the United States. This case will uphold the practice of the criminalization of homelessness or disrupt it."

According to the National Homelessness Law Center, more than 600,000 people experience homelessness daily, with half forced to sleep outside.

"I believe that people have a human right to safe, stable, and affordable housing," Bowen said. "When a country like the United States does not do enough to ensure that the right to housing is realized, through expanded access to affordable housing, I believe people do have the right to sleep outside."

California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed have criticized the circuit court ruling, saying it prevents local governments from maintaining public safety.

"The Ninth Circuit and respondents have tried to downplay the ways in which the ruling ties local leaders' hands, but their arguments only confirm the decision's ambiguity and unworkability," an amicus brief filed by Newsom from September said. "Respondents insist that the ruling below does not prohibit clearing encampments, yet multiple district courts have held that it does exactly that."

This isn't the first time the Supreme Court has had the chance to make a ruling on the state of homelessness in the United States. In 2019, it rejected the offer to rule in Martin v. Boise, which had a similar situation at the forefront of the case.

A group of 19 members of Congress have expressed their support for the earlier ruling in the Ninth Circuit in an amicus brief this month.

"Punishing human beings for existing when they have nowhere safe to rest is not only unconstitutional, it is also the least effective and most costly response a city can choose," the brief said.

"Rather than criminalize homelessness and ban the unhoused from our communities, we should invest in the proven solutions to ending poverty and homelessness for good."

Paul Collins, a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the current oral arguments in the case reflect the wide-reaching implications as cities grapple with how to decrease homelessness and offer affordable housing.

"It is likely that the Court will split down ideological lines and uphold the city's policy," Collins told Newsweek. "In their questioning, the Court's conservatives seemed sympathetic to Grants Pass, recognizing the complexity of the issue, but also signaling they believed that this area is better handled by elected officials, rather than judges."

The liberal members of the Supreme Court likely have a different mindset but are outnumbered by the conservative justice supermajority.

"The Court's liberal members were sympathetic to the homeless residents bringing the case, and seemed more focused on the key issue in the case: whether laws that punish people for being homeless are a form of cruel and unusual punishment," Collins said.

Bowen echoed the sentiment, adding that criminalizing people for sleeping outdoors does not effectively ban homelessness, as people with no other options will continue to do so.

"They will just face more obstacles to stabilization in terms of fines and criminal penalties, and more public resources will be spent on legal enforcement, rather than affordable housing," she said.