The Supreme Court upheld on Friday an Oregon city’s law criminalizing public camping, ruling against the Biden administration and advocates who said the law and others like it would punish people with nowhere else to go.
The majority opinion in the 6-3 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, said the Grants Pass law did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment,” and that judges should not decide the best ways to address homelessness.
“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not,” Gorsuch wrote.
