The Supreme Court appeared likely to scale back homeless rights decisions handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over the past six years, but how they would do so was unclear as the court’s conservative supermajority splintered on how far they wanted to go.
The case argued before the court on Monday originally came out of Grants Pass, Oregon, where in 2013 to argue against the circuit’s decision in Martin. They all argued that the circuit’s decision in Martin was overly broad and was being applied in subsequent decisions in a manner that greatly limited their ability to address the growing homeless population in their jurisdictions. Some of these states and cities supported Grants Pass’ push to fully overturn Martin, while others hewed closer to the Justice Department’s desire to simply limit it.
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“It would be a disaster if Martin remained on the books,” Evangelis argued in her closing remarks.
But removing Martin’s protections would also be disastrous for homeless people, who could be subject to increasing schemes like the one implemented by Grants Pass, pushing them out of every state and city that did not want them there.
“Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to [Grants Pass]? Where are they supposed to sleep?” Sotomayor asked. “Are they supposed to kill themselves by not sleeping?”
