MOVE ALONG! Affirming the idea that some people are just too poor to sleep, the United States Supreme Court stands behind ticketing people who have nowhere else to go.
Laws about forcing people off public land and out of public spaces when there are no other options for them, have, until now found the courts unsympathetic. In 2022, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared Grant's Pass, Oregon's laws unconstitutional and amounting to cruel and unusual punishment — ticketing someone for sleeping in public. The conservative majority on the US Supreme Court, however, would like those disgusting hoboes to move along and have overturned it. Tickets and kicking people out of public spaces is fine by them.
The justices on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines with conservatives in the majority ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, saying the measures do not run afoul of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.
"Homelessness is complex," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the ruling. "Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not."
In a sharp dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Grants Pass policy was "unconscionable and unconstitutional." She added that in the future she hoped the court "will play its role in safeguarding constitutional liberties for the most vulnerable among us."
NBC News
It is a very good thing that Justice Thomas has friends who have gifted him an expensive RV.
Previously:
• The SCOTUS decision to let California demand the pork industry become slightly less cruel is pretty important
• Republicans ask SCOTUS to limit women's access to health care further
• US government and SCOTUS change cybercrime rules to let cops hack victims' computers
