## Facts

- The City of Grants Pass, Oregon enacted and enforced three measures that, together, restricted sleeping or camping on city property and in city parks, including rules addressing overnight parking and camping-related items (the anti-camping laws).
- Violations could result in civil fines and civil exclusion orders barring a person from city parks.
- If a person violated an exclusion order, the person could be charged with criminal trespass, which carried the possibility of jail time and criminal fines.
- Gloria Johnson and John Logan were homeless residents of Grants Pass who typically slept in their vehicles and alleged they faced a risk of enforcement under the anti-camping laws.
- The City had not enforced its camping prohibitions against Johnson or Logan at the time the suit was filed.
- Johnson and Logan sued in federal district court, alleging the anti-camping laws violated the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, relying on the Ninth Circuit’s decision in *Martin v. City of Boise*.
- Applying *Martin*, the district court certified a class of “involuntarily homeless” people and entered an injunction barring the City from enforcing the anti-camping laws against the class.
- A divided Ninth Circuit panel largely affirmed, and the Ninth Circuit denied rehearing en banc.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review whether the Eighth Amendment limits enforcement of generally applicable public-camping laws against homeless individuals when shelter is allegedly unavailable.

## Issues

1. Whether the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibits a city from enforcing generally applicable laws restricting camping or sleeping on public property against homeless individuals who allegedly lack access to shelter.
2. Whether such enforcement punishes an impermissible “status” (homelessness) rather than punishable conduct, under *Robinson v. California* and *Powell v. Texas*.
3. Whether the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause authorizes federal courts to bar enforcement of public-camping laws based on shelter availability and related, case-by-case assessments.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and remanded (6–3).
- The Court held that enforcing generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.
- The Court explained that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause addresses the nature and severity of punishments that may be imposed, not which conduct a legislature may prohibit in the first place.
- The Court concluded that Grants Pass’s measures targeted conduct (camping/sleeping on specified public property) and applied to all persons, not the status of being homeless; disproportionate impact on homeless people did not transform the laws into a status offense.
- The Court rejected the Ninth Circuit’s *Martin*-based approach that effectively prevented enforcement whenever shelter beds were not “practically available,” reasoning that nothing in the Eighth Amendment or the Court’s precedents assigns federal judges the role of managing shelter-capacity assessments as a condition of enforcement.
- Justice Thomas concurred separately, questioning portions of the Court’s modern Eighth Amendment doctrine.
- Justice Sotomayor dissented (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson), arguing that when sleeping outside is unavoidable due to lack of shelter, penalizing sleeping with basic bedding effectively punishes homelessness and basic human necessity.

## Legal Principles

- The Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause primarily limits the kind and degree of punishment that may be imposed, rather than serving as a general limit on what conduct may be made unlawful.
- The Constitution prohibits criminalizing a mere status (*Robinson*), but generally applicable prohibitions on conduct may be enforced even if the conduct is associated with, or more likely to be engaged in by, people with a particular condition or circumstance (*Powell*).
- A law directed at conduct does not become a status-based offense solely because some people have fewer practical alternatives to avoid the prohibited conduct.
- The Eighth Amendment does not require a shelter-availability or shelter-capacity inquiry as a prerequisite to enforcing generally applicable public-camping restrictions.
- Other constitutional provisions may still constrain how such laws are written, enforced, or penalized, but the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause does not create a categorical bar on enforcing public-camping laws against homeless individuals.

## Conclusion

In *City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson*, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not bar a city from enforcing generally applicable restrictions on camping or sleeping on public property against homeless individuals, rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s shelter-based enforcement limitation derived from *Martin v. City of Boise* and reversing the injunction entered against Grants Pass.


City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, 144 S. Ct. 2202 (2024)