In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Friday ruled that cities can enforce laws against sleeping on sidewalks and other public property even when homeless people have nowhere else to go, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The conservative justices disagreed with a lower court's ruling that such prohibitions violate the 8th Amendment, which prohibits "excessive" fines as well as "cruel and unusual punishments."
“Homelessness is complex,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for the majority . “Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it."
The three liberal judges harshly disagreed, arguing that the court has effectively made it illegal to be extremely poor.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “For some people, sleeping outside is their only option. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional. Punishing people for their status is ‘cruel and unusual’ under the 8th Amendment.”
Sotomayor noted that, on any given night, hundreds of thousands of people across the country sleep on the street because they do not have anywhere else to go.
"It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles," she wrote. "Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested."
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