The justices seemed skeptical of the federal government’s interpretation of the law at oral arguments in January, suggesting its reading directly contradicts the statute’s text.
The consolidated cases are Campos-Chaves v. Garland, case number 22-674, and Garland v. Singh et al., case number 22-884.
Homelessness
An Oregon city has urged the justices to reinstate its ban on camping in public spaces, which opponents claim has been enforced effectively as a ban on people who are homeless.
The city of Grants Pass claims its trio of ordinances prohibiting sleeping in public parks and walkways, under bridges and viaducts, and in other public spaces are constitutional because they punish the act of sleeping in public rather than the involuntary status of being homeless. But Gloria Johnson and other residents who are homeless argue the city is using the ordinances to run them out of town and that they constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
The court appeared divided along ideological lines at oral arguments in April, with the liberal justices leaning toward agreeing with Johnson that the ordinances are unconstitutional under the court’s 1962 decision in Robinson v. California, which made it unconstitutional to punish a defendant for a status rather than an illegal act. The conservative justices, on the other hand, questioned where to draw the line when various criminal acts could arguably be equated with a status.
