## Facts

- Six homeless individuals living in Los Angeles’s Skid Row brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against the City of Los Angeles and LAPD officials in their official capacities.
- Los Angeles Municipal Code § 41.18(d) made it unlawful to “sit, lie or sleep” on any street, sidewalk, or other public way at any time and in any place in the city.
- Plaintiffs alleged that, given the shortage of shelter beds relative to the homeless population, many people had no practical alternative to sleeping in public.
- Each plaintiff was cited or arrested under § 41.18(d) on a night when the plaintiff could not obtain shelter.
- Plaintiffs sought declaratory and limited injunctive relief to bar enforcement (i) during nighttime hours (9:00 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.) and (ii) against temporarily infirm or permanently disabled individuals.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the City, concluding the ordinance punished conduct rather than the status of homelessness.

## Issues

1. Whether enforcing § 41.18(d) against homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter violates the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.
2. Whether criminal punishment of sitting, lying, or sleeping in public, when shelter is unavailable, functions as unconstitutional punishment of “status” under Robinson v. California and related doctrine.
3. Whether the challenged relief should be limited to an as-applied restriction rather than invalidation of the ordinance in all circumstances.

## Decision

- A divided Ninth Circuit panel reversed the grant of summary judgment for the City.
- The panel held § 41.18(d) unconstitutional as applied to homeless persons cited for sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks when they had no available shelter and no realistic alternative.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with that Eighth Amendment analysis.
- A dissent would have upheld the ordinance as a permissible regulation of conduct, warning against creating a right to occupy public sidewalks.
- After settlement-related developments, the Ninth Circuit later vacated the panel decision as moot and directed dismissal.

## Legal Principles

- The Eighth Amendment limits criminal punishment that effectively targets an involuntary status rather than culpable conduct.
- When a person has no realistic alternative due to shelter unavailability, punishing life-sustaining acts such as sleeping may be treated as punishment for the condition of homelessness.
- Robinson’s prohibition on punishing status, and the involuntariness analysis drawn from Powell, can apply where the challenged conduct is inseparable from an involuntary condition and unavoidable human needs.
- An as-applied Eighth Amendment challenge can succeed without requiring a city to provide shelter or eliminating all regulation of conduct in public spaces.

## Conclusion

The panel concluded that criminal enforcement of Los Angeles’s sit/lie/sleep ordinance against homeless individuals who could not obtain shelter impermissibly punished unavoidable, life-sustaining conduct tied to an involuntary condition, and thus violated the Eighth Amendment as applied; the judgment was later vacated after the case became moot.


Jones v. City of Los Angeles, 444 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2006), vacated as moot, 505 F.3d 1006 (9th Cir. 2007)