WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the Court considered whether a city ordinance that punishes homeless people for sleeping in public imposes “cruel and unusual punishment” and violates the Eighth Amendment, Brian Frazell, Deputy Chief Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, offered the following response:
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has once again demonstrated its willingness to construct a false historical narrative to achieve its desired outcome, regardless of what the historical evidence shows.
In an analysis of less than a page, today’s majority argues that the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause was adopted solely to prevent physical torture methods that were already out of use before the Bill of Rights was ratified. The majority ignored the centuries of history behind the clause, relied on a few out-of-context citations, and simply refused to face compelling evidence that the clause was originally understood to require punishment to be proportionate to the crime — in other words, to prevent punishment beyond the criminal’s responsibility.
This understanding of the clause has also been central to Supreme Court case law for over a century. Following this history and precedent closely would have led to the conclusion that any punishment would be unconstitutional and excessive when the government cannot literally avoid engaging in conduct that it has made illegal, such as when a homeless person with nowhere else to go is punished for sleeping in public.
Ignoring history, precedent, and reality, the conservative majority pretended that this was a case about what behavior the government could criminalize. It isn’t. No one has argued that cities cannot generally ban people from sleeping in public; only that it is cruel and unusual to punish people who literally have nowhere else to sleep. By condoning the practice, the Supreme Court’s decision risks incalculable harm not only to homeless people but to one of our most important constitutional guarantees.
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resource:
City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson lawsuit page: https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/city-of-grants-pass-oregon-v-johnson/
