In Grant's Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court upheld a local law prohibiting camping on public property. In doing so, the Court declined to extend California v. Robinson (1962). Here is how I described Robinson:
Robinson v. California (1962) may be peak Warren Court activism. California made it a crime to be addicted to narcotics–not simply to use drugs, but to be addicted to using them. Robinson argued that this law violates some sort of substantive due process right. This was three years before Griswold, so the Court still was stuck under the New Deal settlement that rejected substantive due process. So what does the Warren Court do? It manufactures a new standard based on the Eighth Amendment out of whole cloth. Sort of like a penumbra. (Griswold favorably cites Robinson.) The Robinson Court held that it would violate the Eighth Amendment to punish someone because of the "status" of being a drug addict. The Court ruled that when punishing "'status,'" "[e]ven one day in prison would be . . . cruel and unusual." Id., at 666–667.
Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion all-but-ruled that Robinson was wrongly decided. For sure, the Court declined to extend that precedent to the facts of Grants Pass.
