Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Grants Pass Anti‑camping Ordinance

The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard argument in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case testing whether a municipal anti‑camping ordinance that forbids establishing a campsite (including bedding) amounts to status‑based punishment for people who have nowhere to sleep.

Petitioner counsel told the court that "these generally applicable laws prohibit specific conduct and are essential to public health and safety," and urged the justices to reverse the Ninth Circuit's approach, which, petitioner said, has "tied cities' hands by constitutionalizing the policy debate" about encampments. Counsel argued that Robinson v. California's narrow holding — that the State may not criminalize the status of drug addiction — does not bar jurisdictions from punishing conduct such as "establishing a campsite" and that extending Robinson would create unworkable line‑drawing problems for courts and police.

Respondents countered that the Grants Pass ordinance, by defining a campsite to include "any place a homeless person is while covered with a blanket," effectively punishes the status of homelessness. Respondent counsel told the court that Robinson "holds that status‑based punishment schemes are categorically cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment," and argued that individual determinations (whether a person truly has no shelter alternative) are required before enforcement can proceed.

Justices repeatedly pressed both sides on administrability. Several asked how officers or courts would count available shelter beds or determine whether a particular bed is "adequate" and physically or legally accessible to a person — questions that arise under the Ninth Circuit's Martin decisions and under state law necessity defenses. The transcript records petitioner acknowledging that the Gospel Rescue Mission in Grants Pass has "less than a hundred" beds while the district court found "as many as 600" people experiencing homelessness in the city, a factual mismatch central to the dispute over whether enforcement would amount to banishment.

A recurring theme was whether the Eighth Amendment is the right vehicle. Counsel for respondents urged the Court to apply Robinson's principle to prevent laws that "make it physically impossible for homeless people to live in Grants Pass without facing endless fines and jail time." Petitioner urged caution, warning that an Eighth Amendment rule that turns on whether conduct is "involuntary" or whether beds are "adequate" would force courts into detailed supervision of municipal policy and could produce inconsistent results across jurisdictions.

Justices explored hypotheticals (bans on eating, cooking, fires, or public urination) to probe the limits of a status‑vs‑conduct distinction and whether state necessity defenses or the new Oregon statute codifying time/place/manner standards could narrow or moot the constitutional question. Counsel noted that Oregon law recognizes a narrow necessity defense, and the parties acknowledged a recently enacted Oregon statute that purports to set objective time/place/manner requirements for restrictions on people experiencing homelessness.

The argument closed with petitioner's rebuttal that the case is far from Robinson and that extending Robinson would create a cascade of fact‑intensive problems for police and courts. The case was submitted.

The Court grappled with several narrow but consequential questions: whether attaching a universal human act (sleeping) to homelessness turns a conduct ban into status‑based punishment; whether individualized inquiries about access to shelter can be administered in preenforcement or classwide injunctions; and how far federal courts should police municipal responses to homelessness. The decision will address the intersection of constitutional criminal‑punishment doctrine, municipal authority, and homelessness policy.

The case was submitted; no decision date was announced.