A court ruling prevents homeless people from being ticketed for sleeping outside. A case review could change that

The United States Supreme Court will review the Oregon homelessness case Johnson v. Grants Pass, which built on an earlier Idaho case, Martin v. Boise.

Martin v. Boise said that homeless people can't be ticketed or punished for sleeping outside, if there are no available beds in shelters. The Supreme Court denied Boise's 2019 request to review the case.

The 2020 Oregon decision by a court in Medford , Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, said that homeless people also cannot be subject to administrative enforcement and civil penalties, for example , fines for using a blanket or pillow or being barred from all city property.

Grants Pass appealed to the Supreme Court, asking it to decide whether restrictions on camping on public property are a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the 8th Amendment.

The Supreme Court could make any number of decisions, including upholding the decision, or overturning it and remanding it.

If the court upholds the decision, it applies to the entire country, according to the National Homelessness Law Center and Howard Belodoff, who represented the six homeless plaintiffs in Martin v. Boise.

What it means for Idaho if the Supreme Court were to overturn the decision, is entities could arrest or ticket people for sleeping outside, Belodoff said.

The case will decide, essentially, whether cities are allowed to punish people for activities like sleeping outside with a pillow, according to the National Homelessness Law Center.

"Public officials don't have to criminalize homelessness, if they choose not to," Belodoff said. "It's not really a workable solution ... (people) have to stand somewhere. They have to sleep somewhere."

Although Idaho's and Boise's homeless population pales in comparison with places like Los Angeles, homelessness has been increasing in the Treasure Valley in recent years .

For example, Boise's homeless population was counted at 687 last year, a 6% increase from 2020, versus 75,000 in Los Angeles County.

Jodi Peterson-Stigers, Executive Director of Interfaith Sanctuary, expressed a mixture of frustration but hopes that the Supreme Court would uphold the 9th circuit's ruling.

"As homelessness gets worse and we're falling behind on housing inventory and actual enough shelter beds, we're looking at, how can we criminalize our homeless more?" Peterson-Stigers said. "It's an unproductive conversation. It's an expensive non-solution."

The National Homelessness Law Center said in a news release that this "sets the stage for the most significant Supreme Court case about the rights of homeless people in decades."

The State of Idaho and the Association of Idaho Cities had filed amicus briefs, urging the court to take up the case.

“Western states have found themselves constrained, unable to effectively tackle the grave problems posed by public encampments in their communities,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador previously said in a statement, after filing an amicus brief. “The five-year experiment of the Ninth Circuit must be halted. Federal courts should exercise restraint and avoid unnecessary interference in state-level affairs.”

In a statement Friday, Labrador said he was "very pleased" the Supreme Court was taking the matter up.

"We have all witnessed the impacts on the public streets and spaces of once-beautiful cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle," Labrador said. "This is at the heart of preserving livability in cities everywhere."

"We are encouraged that the Supreme Court has decided to grant review in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case. We welcome clarification in this important area of law so that cities can work to protect the health and safety of their communities—both housed and unhoused," said Anit Jindal at the law firm Markowitz Herbold PC, counsel for the Association of Idaho Cities.

It's unclear when the case will be argued, according to the Associated Press.

"It's going to be up to local officials, state officials, to deal with the issue no matter what the Supreme Court does ... no matter what, there are homeless people," Belodoff said. "It's in the hands of nine judges right now."