Press Release  AG Campbell Joins Supreme Court Brief Opposing The Criminalization Of Involuntary Homelessness

BOSTON — Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today announced that she has joined a coalition of attorneys general in filing a Supreme Court amicus brief supporting the respondents, two homeless individuals, in City of Grants Pass v. Gloria Johnson and John Logan. The brief argues that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits punishing people for sleeping on public property when they have no other place to lawfully sleep.

“Punishing people simply for not having a roof over their heads, often due to circumstances outside of their control, completely disregards their dignity and humanity,” said AG Campbell. “Criminalizing homelessness will only perpetuate the cycles of instability these individuals face. I am proud to join my colleagues in this fight to protect vulnerable populations here in Massachusetts and across our country.” 

The City of Grants Pass, Oregon, passed two ordinances that prohibited people from sleeping on public property with even minimal protection from the elements. In 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, barred the City from enforcing these provisions against people who are involuntarily homeless – that is, people experiencing homelessness who have no other lawful place to sleep in the City. In January 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. 

In the brief, the coalition argues that punishing a person who is homeless for sleeping on public property is not meaningfully different than punishing them from being homeless, since the only way for such a person to comply with the City’s anti-sleeping ordinance is for them to leave the City altogether.

The coalition further explains that the Court of Appeals’ decision is clear and narrow – a city cannot punish a person for sleeping on public property when the person has nowhere else to sleep. This decision, the brief continues, does not prevent state and local governments from taking reasonable measures to regulate encampments set up by people experiencing homelessness. It also does not stop state and local governments from enforcing their criminal laws more broadly. Finally, the decision does not prevent state and local governments from addressing homelessness with policy tools that don’t push people experiencing homelessness into neighboring jurisdictions.  

In the brief, the coalition discusses how state and local governments have responded to homelessness and encampments with solutions other than criminalization. It emphasizes the success of “housing first” approaches to homelessness – fighting homelessness by, first and foremost, providing housing to people experiencing it – and explains how criminalization tends to make the problem worse.  

The amicus brief in full may be found here.

In filing the brief, Attorney General Campbell was joined by the attorneys general of Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, and Vermont.

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