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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28520 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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This is completely wrong. The Court found that laws can target a wide variety of behaviors, and that the 8th Amendment prohibition on "cruel and unusual" is just on the punishment after conviction. Homelessness is still a status that can't be criminalized.

No, I think HuffPo gets it right. The crazy reality of Martin (etc) is that it really did treat homelessness as "a class with an immutable status that confers protections". In particular, under that line of cases, the involuntarily homeless could not be punished for anything that was a logical necessity for the homeless. For example, even though there was a public camping ordinance, that could not be enforced against an individual that lacks access to alternative shelter.

So more than saying "involuntarily homelessness is a status that cannot be criminalized", it also says "because of that, regular and usual conduct that can normally be criminalized, cannot be criminalized against folks with that status, if that behavior is logically entwined with that status". See. e.g this SF case

Applying Martin, a district court entered an injunction barring the city from enforcing “laws and ordinances to prohibit involuntarily homeless individuals from sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property.” Coalition on Homelessness v. San Francisco

So in truth, the precedent in the ninth circuit really was involuntary homeless status was a a shield against conduct law, if you can draw a tight enough connection between the status and the conduct.

The crazy reality of Martin (etc) is that it really did treat homelessness as "a class with an immutable status that confers protections". In particular, under that line of cases, the involuntarily homeless could not be punished for anything that was a logical necessity for the homeless.

And the dissent didn't really bother with that. In Powell v. Texas the court ruled that just because the crime was involuntary doesn't mean it couldn't be banned. So the dissent denies that it's about being involuntary:

The Powell Court considered a statute that criminalized voluntary conduct (getting drunk) that could be rendered involuntary by a status (al- coholism); here, the Ordinances criminalize conduct (sleeping outside) that defines a particular status (homelessness). So unlike the debate in Powell, this case does not turn on whether the criminalized actions are “ ‘involuntary’ or ‘occasioned by’ ” a particular status.

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