This post is rather late, but it’s important that advocates know that the Supreme Court has *granted certiorari* in Johnson v. Grants Pass, the case relating to the 9th Circuit’s jurisprudence preventing the criminalization of homelessness. As mentioned in this space previously, this appellate effort is being spearheaded by Governor Newsom, a host of Democratic California mayors and other affected municipalities.
Leaving aside the deep, cruel irony that Democrats are petitioning the court that overturned Roe v. Wade to criminalize homelessness, this news is almost certainly all bad for unhoused persons, their advocates, and people like myself trying to end the criminalization of homelessness more generally. These days, SCOTUS’s opinion on politically-charged cases can almost always be predicted along partisan lines, and this is doubly true in cases like this where moderate Democrats also don’t like the 9th Circuit’s precedent. While there is a pipe-dream scenario where all the liberal justices, Chief Justice Roberts, and someone with mercurial tendencies like Neil Gorsuch band together to uphold Johnson v. Grants Pass, the vastly more likely scenario is that the 9th Circuit is reversed completely, and we lose the line of cases going back to Martin v. Boise in 2012.
The list of interested parties submitting amicus briefs to SCOTUS on this issue is telling. On the one hand, you have various civil rights groups, the government of the United States, unhoused persons and their attorneys, and legal aid. On the other, you have cities, counties, and right-wing agitators like the Pacific Legal Foundation, law enforcement unions, various Chambers of Commerce, and groups of neo-fascist local “concerned citizens”. Most odious to me personally is a group calling themselves the “LA Alliance for Human Rights”, a group which submitted an amicus brief with developers in support of criminalizing homelessness as “tough love”.
Both research and the history of common practice show that the criminalization of homelessness simply doesn’t work, and, indeed, erects further barriers to helping unhoused persons find shelter and permanent housing. We have known for literally decades that when you add civil and criminal penalties to homelessness, it threatens every pillar of a stable life:
Incarceration and fines make it harder to maintain employment, apply for loans, complete education, as well as purchase basic necessities, including rent and food.
Marginalizing and pathologizing poverty further isolates unhoused individuals and destroys trust and progress made by nonprofit and government service providers.
Street sweeps destroy vital records, medication, and lifesaving supplies. For the unhoused struggling with addiction or mental health, criminalization can in the blink of an eye undo months or years of progress made by medical professionals.
Criminalization is also MORE EXPENSIVE than simply providing services, due to the astronomical cost of involuntary commitment, incarceration, and criminal prosecution.
Unfortunately, right-wing zealots and their Democratic enablers have forgotten or ignored these clear, obvious, empirically reaffirmed facts about homelessness because developing real, compassionate infrastructure to provide for our most vulnerable citizens is either (1) anathema to their politics or (2) too much of an electoral weakness to spend the capital. For another example, see this New York City Council member, an Asian-American Democrat in a safe, bluer-than-blue district, cheering a protest against the construction of a men’s shelter in her neighborhood.
While the situation may seem dire, it’s still important that our side has its say. There are very few briefs submitted against the petitioners in this case so far. I’m reaching out to our national partner organizations to see how we can contribute. If you, dear reader, know anything about plans to submit amici, please let me know! I want to be a part of the effort, if for no reason than to preserve evidence of this foolishness into the historical record.
In the meantime, we must remember that the fight against criminalizing homelessness is bigger than just that – it’s a fight to reframe the way this country thinks about poverty. Keep it up – at the end of the day, I do believe that we will win.
CCWRO Homelessness News and Notes 