one element of Grants Pass is that it’s not just about whether you can enforce anti-camping laws against the homeless. it’s about whether you can enforce those laws **even when you haven’t provided adequate shelter beds**
First decision is Grants Pass. Gorsuch has the 6-3 opinion finding that the Eighth Amendment does not bar "generally applicable" laws banning public camping. Sotomayor writes the dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...
the 9th Circuit never said that you can’t, e.g., bust up homeless encampments. They just said that before you do, you need to provide shelter beds, otherwise you’re just being punitive and cruel. An extremely basic a call for decency, but many West Coast city leaders were outraged
There is simply a missing foundation of shared humanity that I find loathesome. I will never understand these people. It makes it hard for me to take even valid concerns seriously because they feel like a performative veneer over a politics of disgust.
I really think it goes back to the awful conservative “most of them want to be homeless actually” opinion. They absolve themselves of basic human empathy by believing homeless people choose to be homeless and should just stop being homeless.
