The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday
that a homeless person cannot be cited for violating city ordinances against
camping or disorderly conduct for sleeping in outdoor public spaces if they do
not have access to city shelters.
The case was brought by six homeless and formerly
homeless individuals in the City of Boise, Idaho. The plaintiffs argued that
the citations violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth
Amendment. The court found that “as long as there is no option of sleeping
indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for
sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice
in the matter.”
Through a Boise Police Department special order, the city
refrains from enforcing the camping or disorderly conduct ordinances if the
shelters report being full. The City of Boise has three homeless shelters. One
reported being full roughly 40 percent of nights, while the other two never
reported being full. However, the other two homeless shelters will bar a person
who has stayed 17 consecutive nights from staying at the shelter for 30 days,
unless the person participates in the shelter’s religion-based treatment
program.
The court found that “city cannot, via the threat of
prosecution, coerce an individual to attend religion-based treatment programs
consistently with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.” Two of the
shelters also generally denied shelter to anyone who arrived after 8:00 PM.
Therefore, the court found that even though the shelters did not report being
full, it did not mean that a homeless individual had an option to go to the
homeless shelter. Enforcement of the ordinances against someone who does have
access to an alternative shelter violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Clause of the Eighth Amendment.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
released a report in November 2016, which found that many cities around the US
have increased the criminalization of being homeless. The US Department of
Justice in August 2015 challenged the Boise law that criminalized sleeping in
public, claiming that the law was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
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(Published by Reuters, September 05, 2018)