The Supreme Court allowed cities to punish homeless people for sleeping outside, but never touched a separate, unchallenged ruling that Grants Pass's fines were unconstitutionally excessive.
Street Democracy, together with the Fines and Fees Justice Center and The Rutherford Institute, filed an amicus brief in _City of Grants Pass v. Johnson_, the most significant U.S. Supreme Court case on homelessness in 40 years.
The brief made a narrow, decisive argument. The question before the Court was whether Grants Pass's anti-camping laws violated the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. But separate from that question, the district court had also ruled that the same fines violated the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause — a distinct constitutional protection with its own history and test — and Grants Pass never challenged that ruling on appeal. Having abandoned the argument below, the city could not raise it for the first time at the Supreme Court. Because that unchallenged excessive-fines holding was enough by itself to sustain the injunction against the city's ordinances, amici urged the Court to dismiss the case as improvidently granted rather than reach the broader cruel-and-unusual-punishment question.
The fines at issue were steep by design: a $295 mandatory minimum, rising to $537.60 with collection fees, for the unavoidable act of sleeping outside with a blanket or piece of cardboard for warmth — imposed on people who, by definition, cannot afford shelter and therefore cannot pay.
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that enforcing generally applicable anti-camping laws against homeless people does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The Court's ruling did not disturb the district court's separate, unchallenged holding that the city's fines were excessive under the Excessive Fines Clause.