Supreme Court refuses to consider cities' efforts to prosecute the homeless for sleeping outside

Show Caption Hide Caption An organizations battle to keep the LA streets clean The Los Angeles Industrial District BID is one of the few organizations working to maintain's one of densest homeless districts in the country.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether state and local governments can make it a crime for homeless people to sleep outside.

The justices won't hear a case from Boise, Idaho, that posed nationwide ramifications for cities with large numbers of homeless people living on the streets.

The question was whether the homeless can be prosecuted using laws designed to regulate public camping and sleeping – or whether that constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

The court's refusal to take up the issue is a setback to some states and cities with burgeoning homelessness. They wanted a federal appeals court ruling overturned, allowing them to prosecute people who sleep on streets when they claim shelter beds are unavailable. Boise appealed the ruling, hoping to enforce its ban on camping in public.

"We’re thrilled that the court has let the 9th Circuit decision stand so that homeless people are not punished for sleeping on the streets when they have no other option," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. "But ultimately, our goal is to end homelessness through housing, which is effective and saves taxpayer dollars, so that no one has to sleep on the streets in the first place."

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of cities, especially in the West, where they pitch tents on sidewalks or under bridges, live in cars or simply sleep out in the open.

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In Los Angeles, the homeless authority counted 27,221 people as unsheltered.

The notion of criminalizing homelessness when shelters are bulging enrages advocates.

"Criminalization isn't a strategy for ending homelessness. It is the consequence of not having a strategy," said Nan Roman, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled last year that prosecuting homeless individuals violated the Constitution because their situation was an "unavoidable consequence of one’s status or being.”

That was only the latest shoe to drop in a case dating back more than 10 years. It was initiated by six homeless people who were fined for violating an ordinance in Boise, a city of 225,000 that operates three homeless shelters serving about 900 people.

"Sleeping outside is a biological necessity for those who cannot obtain shelter," lawyers for the homeless individuals said in court papers. "A city that criminalizes both sleeping on private property and public property when no alternative shelter is available leaves a homeless individual who cannot obtain shelter with no capacity to comply with the law."

Boise sought the Supreme Court's intervention, and it brought along support from a wide range of states, cities and business groups that filed 20 friend-of-the-court briefs warning of crime, violence, disease and environmental hazards.

"The consequences of the 9th Circuit’s erroneous decision have already been – and will continue to be – far-reaching and catastrophic," its lawyers told the court. "Encampments provide a captive and concentrated market for drug dealers and gangs who prey on the vulnerable. It is thus no surprise that nearly 1,000 homeless people died on the streets last year in Los Angeles County alone."

A new report from the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty found a 15% increase over three years in the number of cities that punish homeless people for sleeping in public, even as the number of unsheltered homeless rose by 10%.

Advocates for the homeless say fining or arresting people who have nowhere else to go amounts to "arresting exhausted, deeply poor and vulnerable Americans struggling to meet the most basic human need for sleep," said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Court challenges such as the one from Boise sap money that could be poured into trying to solve the core problem of homelessness, said the Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles.

The country should be "focusing on immediate 24/7/365 shelters with comprehensive services and case management," he said, plus affordable, permanent housing.

Contributing: Kristin Lam