The editors of the Washington Post, prudently, come down on the side of those wanting to be able to ban unregulated camping in public spaces:
Of the 653,000 people who experience homelessness in the United States, 41 percent live in the nine westernmost states, according to the most recent federal survey. That includes the five states with the highest rates of unsheltered people. There are many reasons for this, from patterns of poverty and drug addiction to the benign weather in California — 68 percent of whose 181,000 homeless people were unsheltered, more than any other state. A little-known but crucial factor, however, is that all these states are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, whose unique legal doctrine has effectively barred most enforcement of local public camping bans.
Though started with good intentions — to prevent “criminalization” of poverty and to incentivize cities to offer shelters — the 9th Circuit approach has shown itself to be counterproductive. Without a credible threat of sanctions against public camping, officials have little leverage to induce people to take shelter beds when they are available. Arguably, this has undermined quality of life not only for those who live or work near unsafe encampments but also for the homeless people themselves.
That’s why a broad bipartisan coalition including leaders from big blue cities and small red towns in the 9th Circuit, and elsewhere, is begging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Grants Pass, Ore., a small city in the south of the state whose civil fines for public camping were invalidated last year by the 9th Circuit. Oral argument is Monday, and we, too, hope the justices side with Grants Pass.
I don’t know why the 9th Circuit made the decision that it did but I do believe that it got out of its lane in doing so. The courts should be deciding what the law is rather than what it should be or what policy should be.
