Around 100 people marched from San Francisco’s federal building to City Hall on Monday, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold lower court rulings on how cities can respond to homelessness.
The action came as SCOTUS heard oral arguments in the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson. The decision — which is expected by the end of June — is likely to impact whether cities around the country can issue fines and jail people for camping on public property if there isn’t a viable shelter alternative available.
“We’re here to stop the illegal pushing and shoving of the homeless,” said LaMonte Ford, who is currently unhoused. “It really hurts to think that your existence is now against the law, so we are all here to assemble against that.”
Ford previously lived at the Wood Street Commons, a large encampment in West Oakland that the city cleared in 2023. He said the community sustained him for years while he could not afford rent.
“It felt like somebody was ripping my mother away from me,” Ford said of the encampment sweep.
“It’s all we have. We have to exist in some kind of way,” he added. “Sweeps kill.”
The High Court is specifically reviewing a lower court’s decision, upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that bars cities across the Western United States from criminalizing people for sleeping outside if no viable shelter options are available. Doing so, the lower court ruled, would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.
Officials from across the political map, from Gov. Gavin Newsom to conservative state political leaders, joined in asking the Supreme Court to take up the case and clarify how much authority local leaders have to clear encampments.
After over two and a half hours of argument, the court appeared divided along ideological lines, but the majority of justices indicated they consider local officials to be better equipped than the courts to take on these matters — a sign they may be leaning toward giving Grants Pass and other cities broader authority to regulate homelessness.
Still, the liberal justices were deeply skeptical of the constitutionality of the city’s policies, suggesting that it criminalized people for simply being unhoused.
“Where do we put them? If every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this — where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves not sleeping?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the attorney representing the city of Grants Pass.
Advocates for the unhoused found reason to be optimistic, pointing out that conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s questions indicated that he believes jailing people can’t solve homelessness.
“Every single time a court has heard this question, they’ve agreed that punishing people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go is cruel and unusual,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center. “So, we remain hopeful that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and agree with all of the lower courts’ decisions and affirm that everybody, regardless of housing status, is protected by the Constitution.”
Groups like the American Psychiatric Association support that position. In a brief submitted to the court, the medical group wrote, “People with mental illness experiencing homelessness already face various barriers to accessing mental health treatment; incarceration exacerbates these barriers.”
However, opponents of the previous courts’ rulings argue that fines and short jail stints are a reasonable response when someone violates city laws by camping in public spaces.
