CPR: A ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which holds it is unconstitutional to ban homeless people from sleeping on the streets is likely to complicate the attempts to crack down on homelessness problems by local governments in California.
While the ruling involved a 2009 law adopted by Boise, Idaho, it is binding on California, which is one of the states under the 9th appellate court, which is based in San Francisco.
“[J]ust as the state may not criminalize the state of being ‘homeless in public places,’ the state may not ‘criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying, or sleeping on the streets,’” Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for a three-judge panel.
The finding that the law is a cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment was welcomed by activists who have long argued that such restrictions make being poor a crime.
Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told the Idaho Statesman that “criminally punishing homeless people for sleeping on the street when they have nowhere else to go is inhumane, and we applaud the court for holding that it is also unconstitutional.” Her group provided an attorney to the handful of Boise homeless men and women who sued over the city’s law.
If Boise does not appeal the ruling, the 9th Circuit will have expanded on the protections for the homeless that it created in 2007. The appellate panel ruled then that Los Angeles could not ban people from sleeping outside when shelters were full. read more
If the street is in actuality their home are they technically homeless when sleeping on the street? Inquiring minds want to know?
If I shit in the street do I have to sleep in it?
Sleep, shit, piss; sleep, shit, piss. It’s an unavoidable consequence of being homeless. Repeat. Now it’s legal. The Ninth Circus said it is legal. So it is written, so it is legal. What an affront this Court is to civilized citizens. Break it up with another Circuit Court. Let the Ninth Circuit Court live with a smaller consequence to its Leftist Lunacy.
Some good citizens of Boise should hire a team of blind people to walk along city sidewalks finding their way by using extra long white-painted red-tipped cattle prods.
TRUMP NEEDS TO BUILD THAT WALL STRAIGHT UP PASS CALIFORNIA
What the hell! Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sleeping on the bench of the Supreme Court, so this Ninth Circuit Court decision is just protecting one of their own.
If given an acre of land somewhere in country would they know how to make shelter, garden, raise a cow, etc. like pioneers? i don’t think so
Relocate those homeless people to the Judges neighborhoods let them reap what they sew.
I hope they sleep on the sidewalk in front of google, amazon, twitter, facebook….
Bus them for free to tents set
up on “the streets” in front of
the judges homes. I’m sure funding
from donations of SF business’s where
they are now sleeping is readily available for the asking.
The 9th Circuit must be using a different constitution than the rest of us.