SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.29.2024 UPDATED
Often, encampments are found in a city’s “poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods.” Brief for City and County of San Francisco et al. as Amici Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 5 (San Francisco Cert. Brief ); see also 2020 HUD Report 9. With encampments dotting neighborhood sidewalks, adults and children in these communities are sometimes forced to navigate around used needles, human waste, and other hazards to make their way to school, the grocery store, or work. San Francisco Cert. Brief 5; States Brief 8; California Governor Brief 11–12. Those with physical disabilities report this can pose a special challenge for them, as they may lack the mobility to maneuver safely around the encampments. San Francisco Cert. Brief 5; see also Brief for Tiana Tozer et al. as Amici Curiae 1–6 (Tozer Brief ). – Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch
(The case is Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175)
“With this opportunity, we’ll be able to do more to clean and clear our streets — especially for those who are refusing shelter and services,” Mayor London Breed said at a City Hall news conference. “This is very helpful to us as a city.”
City Attorney David Chiu said the court’s action “will give cities more flexibility to provide services to unhoused people while keeping our streets healthy and safe. It will help us address our most challenging encampments, where services are often refused and re-encampment is common.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the ruling “provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets. This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.”
–June 28, 2024. Official San Francisco reaction to Supreme Court decision to legalize the criminalization of the homeless.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins defended encampment evictions last December by arguing that homeless people “have to be made uncomfortable.”
San Francisco, the City of St. Francis which prides itself on progressivism and compassion has completely shredded this reputation.
It was Trump appointed associate Justice Neil Gorsuch who penned the 6-3 decision. In it he relied on the Brief San Francisco filed with the Supreme Court in its effort to disenfranchise and criminalize the homeless.
It was Mayor London Breed and her minions who led a MAGA style rally in front of the Ninth Circuit courthouse last summer imploring the court to overturn an injunction. Which placed limits to what degree San Francisco could abuse and mistreat its homeless population of several thousand. Now those limits have been eviscerated.
The mayor said she was comfortable siding with the six conservative justices on the matter of encampments, which have bedeviled officials in San Francisco.
“That’s how you get things done,” Breed said about agreeing with the conservative jurists. “I don’t shut anybody out.”
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 6.28.2024
Since December 2022, a federal magistrate has barred San Francisco from enforcing certain anti-camping laws, though the city has actually been able to increase encampment sweeps over the past two years by relying on other laws to clear tents
The Supreme Court overturned that ruling Friday in an appeal by Grants Pass that was supported by San Francisco officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The 6-3 majority, led by Justice Neil Gorsuch, said the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” in the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment does not prohibit cities from removing people from encampments or from imposing fines and other criminal penalties on those who refuse to leave.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the city of Grants Pass, Ore., which is where the case originated, was punishing people for their status of homelessness.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” wrote Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “For some people, sleeping outside is their only option. The City of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
Now that the Supreme Court has given a green light to cities’ sweeps of homeless encampments, San Francisco officials intend to use the broader authority granted by the court to more aggressively respond to the hundreds of tents spread across city streets.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, which filed the lawsuit that led to Judge Donna Ryu’s injunction, was critical of Mayor London Breed after the Supreme Court ruling came out.
“The Supreme Court, and I guess the mayor of San Francisco, is aligning with right-wing justice (Samuel) Alito in saying that it’s OK to put unhoused people in a cage when they have no other choice but to sleep outside,” Friedenbach said.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/homelessness-grants-pass-ruling-19484767.php
Top photo – Homeless person with his meagre possessions tries to rest in the shadow of San Francisco City Hall
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