Today, oral arguments were heard by the Supreme Court in City of Grants Pass V. JohnsonA case has been brought up that asks if a law which criminalizes homeless people camping on public land because they have nowhere else to go is “cruel or unusual punishment” as defined by the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment is unlikely to do much for the homeless. The courts could assist them in a more direct way by removing exclusionary zoning from the law as a violation to the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.
The oral arguments today revealed more sympathy among the justices for plaintiffs’ arguments than I would have anticipated. But I doubt that there will be five votes in favor of the Ninth Circuit ruling. The cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Eighth Amendment is not intended to limit the scope of criminal activity that the government may pursue, but rather the type of punishments they can use. This point is made by Prof. Michael Mannheimer – a leading academic on the Eighth Amendment.
