What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Get About Homelessness

The Supreme Court has just ripped away one of the rare shreds of legal protections available to homeless people. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court has decided that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, did not violate the Eighth Amendment by enforcing camping bans against its involuntarily unsheltered residents. The ruling epitomizes why housing has become a crisis in so much of the country: It does nothing to make communities confront their role in causing a housing shortage, and it upholds their ability to inflict pain upon that shortage’s victims.  

This ruling overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals precedents and , which had restrained jurisdictions in much of the case, Justice Neil Gorsuch struck a Tocquevillian note, asserting that the American people, “through their voluntary associations and charities, their elected representatives and appointed officials, their police officers and mental health professionals,” know better than some judges the best way to address homelessness in their cities and towns. And if part of their answer is to jail homeless people, so be it.