Trump Judges Blast Court Ruling on West Coast's Homelessness

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied rehearing an Oregon homelessness case on Wednesday, a move that divided the court and sparked frustration and critical comments from some of the court's conservative judges.

The court's denial to rehear Johnson v. Grants Pass preserves a lower court's ruling from July 2020. In that ruling, the city of Grants Pass, Oregon's methods of combatting homelessness by imposing fines on those camping or sleeping outside in public spaces were deemed unconstitutional.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly along the west coast, are currently unhoused. The issue has prompted cities to examine potential solutions and has spurred discussion of affordable housing as a preventative method to homelessness.

As part of his 2024 presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump has proposed criminalizing homelessness as an effort to address the issue. In Wednesday's ruling, the dissents by two Trump-appointed Ninth Circuit judges argued that cities would now be even further restricted on how they could address their homeless population.

In Grants Pass, anywhere from 50 to 600 of the city's 38,000 residents are unhoused.

The 2020 Johnson decision ruled the city's ordinances against people camping or sleeping outside in public spaces—and the resulting fines against those going against the ordinances—was a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

In the most recent ruling, the Ninth Circuit court referenced its 2018 decision in Martin v. City of Boise, which ruled that if a person experiencing homelessness has no option of sleeping indoors, a city is prohibited from citing the person for violating an ordinance that prevents sleeping outside in public spaces.

However, some of the court's conservative justices argued that both Martin and Johnson should be overturned and overruled as soon as possible.

Daniel Collins, a Trump-appointed justice, argued that both Johnson v. Grants Pass and Martin v. City of Boise should be "overturned or overruled at the earliest opportunity, either by this court sitting en banc or by the U.S. Supreme Court."

But in the opinion denying a rehearing, Judge Roslyn Silver said that the Grants Pass homeless population outnumbered available shelter beds, and those struggling with homelessness had nowhere to sleep other than in streets or parks.

Trump-appointed justice Daniel Bress argued that the court has injected itself into the mix and by deploying the Eighth Amendment, the court was imposing steep restrictions on the course of action local governments could take to address homelessness.

"Looking out the windows of the Ninth Circuit's courthouse in San Francisco, one sees the most difficult problems plaguing big-city America on display. Homelessness, drug addiction, barely concealed narcotics dealing, severe mental health impairment, the post-COVID hollowing out of our business districts," Bress wrote.

"These problems of disrespect for the law, human suffering, and urban decline would seem connected, the result of a complex interaction of forces that defies any easy solution."

George W. Bush-appointed Judge Milan Smith dissented with a similar argument, claiming that the court's refusal to grant a rehearing limits cities' attempts at addressing the crisis.

Smith said that Martin is now supercharged by the Johnson ruling, creating a "runaway train" that evokes damage to governmental units.

"These cases use a misreading of Supreme Court precedent to require unelected federal judges—often on the basis of sloppy, mixed preliminary-injunction records—to act more like homelessness policy czars than as Article III judges applying a discernible rule of law," Smith wrote in his dissent.

Steve Berg, the chief policy officer for the National Alliance to End Homelessness, told Newsweek that while the organization views fining people who can't afford adequate housing as unconstitutional, the Grants Pass ruling is not the answer for addressing homelessness.

"The idea that the government can't punish people for not having money to get housing, it seems to me like an obvious thing, of course, that's unconstitutional," Berg said. "But the real answer is of course for the community to figure out a way to have enough housing for everybody that needs it."