Just over a year ago, as western cities were struggling to respond to an increase in homeless people camping in public places, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released an opinion ruling that cities could not legally prosecute people simply for sitting or lying down on sidewalks or in other public places when there are no shelter beds available. To do so, the court ruled in Martin v. Boise, would run afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The problem wasn’t that the fines cities like Boise were imposing were so exorbitant, the court said, but that the activity was so commonplace, and so expected, that criminalizing it at all was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
As Judge Marsha Berzon wrote in the majority opinion, “As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.” As Next City wrote at the time, the ruling applied to cities in nine states. But in the last year, the housing crisis in many of those states has only deepened, and the numbers of people experiencing homelessness in many cities has grown.
Continue reading Next City here, courtesy of Jared Brey.