I've written two other posts about Grants Pass v. Johnson. First, I commented on whether the law in fact criminalizes the mere status of being homeless, or whether it criminalizes the act of camping in public. Second, I wrote how the Court constrained Robinson v. California, an inherently un-originalist precedent, by declining to extend it.
Here, I will comment on another unusual aspect of the majority opinion: how heavily the majority opinion leaned into amicus briefs. Indeed, Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion cited not only merit-stage briefs, but also cert-stage briefs. The import was clear: even deep-blue jurisdictions from California and similar bastions of leftism contend that the Ninth Circuit's jurisprudence is mistaken. They urged the Court to take the case, and urged the Court to reverse! The majority was quite content to answer the prayer from these progressive enclaves.
Here are just a smattering of citations:
