City of Grants Pass v. Johnson

City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 22, 2024
Full case name	City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson, et al., on Behalf of Themselves and All Others Similarly Situated
Docket no.	23-175
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Motion for class certification granted, 1:18-cv-01823-CL (D. Or. Aug. 7, 2019) Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgement granted in part and denied in part, 1:18-cv-01823-CL (D. Or. Jul. 22, 2020) Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, 50 F.4th 787 (9th Cir. 2022) Petition for rehearing en banc denied, 72 F.4th 868 (9th Cir. 2023)
Questions presented
Does a local government's enforcement of a public camping ban against involuntarily homeless people violate the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment?
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh Amy Coney Barrett · Ketanji Brown Jackson

City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (Docket 23-175) is a pending United States Supreme Court case on whether a local government's ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.

Legal background

In the 1962 case Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court previously held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited criminalization of a status, as opposed to criminalizing criminal acts, in striking down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics.

In the 1968 case Powell v. Texas, the Supreme Court held in a plurality opinion that an alcoholic could be prosecuted under a state statute against public intoxication because the "actus reus" (guilty act) of choosing to drink to the point of intoxication while in public was distinct from the status of being an alcoholic.

In the 2018 case Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that city officials in Boise, Idaho, could not enforce an anti-camping ordinance whenever its homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. Since the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to this case in 2019, it became binding precedent within the Ninth Circuit.

In Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit cited the 1977 case Marks v. United States, which dictates that when there is no majority opinion, the narrowest decision reached between the plurality and concurring opinions becomes precedent. Thus, citing Justice Byron White's concurrence in Powell v. Texas only upholding the conviction because the defendant failed to prove that their alcoholism compelled them to violate the public intoxication statute, the Ninth Circuit held that Robinson v. California remained precedent in prohibiting the criminalization of one's status and associated unavoidable acts.

Oregon District Court ruling

The Oregon Law Center, which supports low-income Oregonians, filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Debra Blake (1959-2021) in the US District Court for the District of Oregon in October 2018. At the time of filing, Blake had been homeless in Grants Pass between eight to ten years, occasionally entering temporary transitional housing. Grants Pass had levied civil fines against violators of anti-camping, anti-sleeping, and parking exclusion ordinances. The city imposed criminal penalties of trespassing on repeat violators that continued to reside on public land.

In August 2019, Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke granted the motion for class certification because the United Community Action Network's January 2019 point-in-time count identified at least 600 homeless people in Josephine County, Oregon, this homeless population is collectively affected by the city of Grants Pass' ability to enforce the ordinance, Blake was representative of homeless people in Grants Pass, and Blake was deemed capable of adequately representing the legal interests of homeless people in Grants Pass.

In July 2020, Clarke ruled that because Grants Pass lacked any homeless shelters that satisfy the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's criteria, its anti-camping, anti-sleeping, and parking exclusion ordinances violated the Ninth Circuit's precedent in Martin v. Boise. Clarke recommended that Grants Pass could pursue its public health interests through narrowly tailored restrictions on the time, place, and manner of sleeping on public land. Furthermore, Clarke held that these ordinances violated the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause because homeless people unable to afford shelter are unlikely to be able to afford fines imposed for the unavoidable, life-sustaining act of sleeping.

At the time of filing, police officers were ability to immediately issue a written order excluding an individual from all parks in Grants Pass based on two or more alleged violations of these ordinances. Since the exclusion order was not stayed pending appeals, the District Court held that the city of Grants Pass' enforcement of the ordinances also violated the Due Process Clause because residents would be deprived of their liberty interest in visiting public parks during a potentially lengthy appeals process.

During a March 2013 community meeting staged by the Grants Pass City Council, Council President Lily Morgan organized the brainstorming of anti-camping ordinances to "make it uncomfortable enough for [homeless individuals] in our city so they will want to move on down the road." The Oregon District Court cited this statement as evidence that the anti-camping ordinances were enacted to prosecute the status of being homeless, rather than uniformly prosecuting acts like parking vehicles on public land.

Ninth Circuit ruling

Following Blake's death in 2021, Gloria Johnson and John Logan were assigned as the class representatives for subsequent appeals. At the time of filing, Johnson lived full-time in her van, and Logan would usually sleep in his car while parked at a rest stop. Since Johnson and Logan had only been fined under the anti-camping and parking exclusion ordinances, the anti-sleeping ordinance was excluded from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's review.

In a September 2022 decision written by Senior District Court Judge Roslyn O. Silver, the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's motion for class certification on the basis that involuntarily homeless people in Grants Pass satisfied the criteria of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation. The Ninth Circuit rejected the city government's defense that its ordinances only criminalized the act of bringing camping items onto public land, rather than the necessary act of sleeping, because the cold temperatures in Grants Pass, Oregon, necessitate the usage of blankets to prevent frostbite. Relying on its prior precedent in Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit enjoined the city of Grants Pass from enforcing its anti-camping ordinance against involuntarily homeless individuals. Circuit Court Judge Daniel P. Collins dissented from the ruling.

In June 2023, the Ninth Circuit denied a petition for an en banc rehearing by the entire Ninth Circuit, amending its opinion with a response to Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain's arguments against the denial. O'Scannlain argued against creating a circuit split from the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Joel v. City of Orlando, 232 F.3d 1353 (11th Cir. 2000), which upheld an anti-camping ordinance by determining that homelessness is not a status. However, Judges Silver and Ronald M. Gould argued that precedent did not apply because Orlando's homeless shelter never reached its maximum capacity.

Supreme Court ruling

Petition for review

Following a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the city government of Grants Pass, Oregon, on August 22, 2023, seeking review of the Ninth Circuit's ruling, many city officials across the western United States filed amicus curiae briefs in favor of city officials, while homelessness advocacy groups filed opposing briefs in favor of Gloria Johnson and John Logan. The petition for review was ultimately granted by the Supreme Court on January 12, 2024.

Oral arguments

During oral arguments held on April 22, 2024, Theane Evangelis of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher argued the case on behalf of Grants Pass, Oregon. Evangelis asserted that homeless individuals should be forced to make an necessity defense in court, rather than challenging the local government's ability to enforce anti-camping ordinances on Eighth Amendment grounds. Justice Elena Kagan criticized this reasoning based on evidence that the anti-camping ordinances were overwhelmingly applied to homeless individuals, rather than all people that brought blankets onto the city's public land, suggesting criminalization of the status of being homeless.

Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler argued the case on behalf of the Biden administration. He claimed that the Ninth Circuit should have evaluated each challenge to the city of Grants Pass' enforcement of the anti-camping ordinances on a case-by-case, rather than granting a class action injunction whenever a city's homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. Since Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure dictates that class action lawsuits are only appropriate when "there are questions of law or fact common to the class," Kneedler emphasized that individual determinations of involuntary homelessness are necessary.

Kelsi Brown Corkran, the Supreme Court Director of Georgetown Law School's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, argued the case on behalf of Gloria Johnson and John Logan. Corkran asserted that the anti-camping ordinance's imposition of a $295 fine, which raises to $537.60 if initially unpaid, lacked any rational basis beyond criminalizing the status of being homeless because the amount was in excess of the average cost of rental housing in Grants Pass, Oregon.

Corkran highlighted that the Supreme Court had routinely rejected local and state attempts to shift homeless populations elsewhere, citing Edwards v. California (striking down ban on transporting low-income individuals into California based on the Dormant Commerce Clause), Saenz v. Roe (striking down minimum residency requirement for receiving state welfare benefits based on the Privileges or Immunities Clause), and Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (striking down anti-vagrancy ordinance based on vagueness doctrine of the Due Process Clause).

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch suggested that the Supreme Court should delegate homelessness policy to local governments because of the complexities in defining involuntary homelessness. Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor noted that the case may be dismissed for a lack of standing because Gloria Johnson and John Logan only received civil fines, not the criminal punishments imposed on repeat violators, so they cannot represent a claim under Robinson v. California, which only dealt with the criminalization of a status.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed the case might also be dismissed for mootness because Section 195.530 of the Oregon Revised Statutes was enacted in 2023, dictating that "any city or county law that regulates the acts of sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property that is open to the public must be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness," while offering an affirmative defense for violators to challenge the reasonableness of such ordinances.