The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to rulings that found punishing people for sleeping outside is cruel and unusual punishment.
The case stems from Grants Pass, Oregon, which began fining people for sleeping outside to manage encampments.
One of the cities impacted by this ruling will be Newport Beach. The city’s mayor, Will O’Neill, told L.A.’s Morning News cities need to know how to approach encampment enforcement.
“…[A] case called Martin vs. Boise muddied the waters and made sure that cities across the board had no idea how to actually enforce their anti-camping ordinance,” he said. “The most recent case in Grants Pass out of Oregon is going to affect the entire Western United States. So we need the United States Supreme Court to roll back the Ninth Circuit precedent and put these decisions back in lawmakers hands, including at the state legislature, county level, city level.”
O’Neill added that having local control because officials want to be able to know who in their city is homeless.
“If the Supreme Court says no, then what you're going to have is exactly what you see all over the place which are encampments around schools, encampments around parks, encampments around fire stations,” he said.
The Supreme Court decision is expected to be public in early summer.
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