How a Supreme Court ruling led to Gavin Newsom’s order on clearing California homeless camps

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to state agencies to adopt policies to evict homeless encampments came a month after the Supreme Court gave California and other states the green light to ban camping on public property.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ruled on ideological lines last month that civil and criminal penalties for camping in public areas are not cruel and unusual punishments on homeless people under the Eighth Amendment.

The 6-3 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson removed blockages from lower court rulings on anti-camping laws in Western states, including California. By siding with the Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, the Supreme Court allowed state and local officials to enforce laws clearing homeless encampments.

Grants Pass v. Johnson asked whether fining and arresting unhoused people for camping in public areas — from a parked car to a tent at the park or a blanket on the sidewalk — when they have nowhere else to go violated the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.”

What was Grants Pass v. Johnson?

The case originated from Grants Pass, a southwest Oregon town of about 40,000 people. About a decade ago, its city council instituted fines that could lead to criminal charges for unhoused people sleeping outside, even those using as little as a blanket or cardboard box when they lacked other shelter, in an effort to ban encampments.

Grants Pass has one overnight shelter for adults with 138 beds. But the shelter has a Christian focus and strict restrictions that made it unpalatable or inaccessible to many of the approximately 600 people who were experiencing homelessness in the city.

In 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Western states, decided in Martin v. City of Boise that the Eighth Amendment prohibited local governments from criminalizing “sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.”

The appellate court relied on a 1962 Supreme Court decision that said the Eighth Amendment prevented criminalizing someone’s status — in Martin v. Boise, the status of homelessness. The 1962 case, Robinson v. California, involved the status of being addicted to drugs.

Following the decision in Martin v. Boise, lawyers representing homeless residents sued Grants Pass over the anti-camping ordinances. In 2020, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that due to the lack of shelter, fining and arresting homeless people for sleeping outside with makeshift bedding violated the Eighth Amendment.

In 2022, the Ninth Circuit agreed. Civil fines that were intertwined with criminal punishments, like the ones in Grants Pass, were blocked there and in Western states, including California.

The Supreme Court overturned both Ninth Circuit rulings in its decision last month.

How did the Ninth Circuit rulings affect California?

Before the Supreme Court decision, some lower court judges citing the Ninth Circuit rulings blocked municipalities from evicting encampments unless there were enough shelter beds for its entire homeless population.

California officials said the Ninth Circuit decisions were confusing and did not properly distinguish what is voluntary versus involuntary homelessness.

Lawmakers from across the state and political spectrum had a strong interest in Grants Pass v. Johnson as California grapples with some of the highest rates of homelessness and housing costs in the United States.

Newsom and others had urged the Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing in legal briefs that lower court rulings had stymied their ability to regulate encampments even when shelter beds were available.

On Thursday, Newsom directed agencies to remove homeless encampments that pose a risk to “life, health and safety.”

“This executive order directs state agencies to move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them — and provides guidance for cities and counties to do the same,” Newsom said in a statement. “The state has been hard at work to address this crisis on our streets. There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”

Housing advocates warned that penalizing people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go would perpetuate poverty and worsen homelessness.

“This is going to be a harmful policy for everyone,” Eric Tars, policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center, which opposed the court’s ruling, said of Newsom’s order. “But there are some people who are going to hurt more, and those are already people already marginalized on racial, gender lines and disabled communities.”