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The epidemic of vagrancy, drug abuse and tent encampments that wrecked cities was set off in part by an utterly insane court decision from over a decade ago.
In Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that cities banning junkie vagrants from living on the streets was unconstitutional because it violated a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
This ruling was unconstitutional and plainly insane, but in the 5 years since it was issued, it helped trash any attempts by cities to stop the nightmare.
The last time the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, even Democrat cities were begging the court to do something.
Pretty much every state affected in the area, from California to Idaho, are asking the Supreme Court to revisit it.
What happens next, who knows?
Urban Democrats who aren’t completely fringe lefties want some legal authority to deal with meth zombies living in local neighborhoods on the street.
Will that inspire any sanity in the court’s Dem justices?
The claim that banning public vagrancy is cruel and unusual punishment is clearly not what the Framers intended so you would think that there would be a win here with the originalists.
Then again Gorsuch has a history of going his own way on certain kinds of social issues. Amy Coney Barrett has proven to be the weakest of the three recent conservative appointees. And Kavanaugh has been kowtowing to Roberts. Still you would think this case should be a winner. Everyone except the DSA wants Martin v. Boise sent back to the judicial activist hell that spawned it.
And this time there won’t be much blowback except from AOC and the Squad for nuking it. Still you never know.
The one thing we’ve learned is to place little hope in Roberts, Kavanaugh, ACB and Gorsuch consistently doing the right thing.
How is it “punishment” at all, let alone “cruel and unusual punishment” to prohibit some types of activity? If you punished vagrancy by torture or execution it could be found that the punishment was “cruel and unusual” but there is nothing “cruel or unusual” about prohibiting the conduct itself. Our legal codes restrict conduct all the time. That is what civilizations do.
Exactly. We keep hearing talk about “packing the court” when it appears to be somewhat packed as it currently stands. In the age of open borders and general lawlessness, I’ll be more than a little surprised if the Justices overturn Martin v. Boise because it would stand in direct conflict and polar opposites to what we see happening in America on an hourly basis.
When a honorably discharged 20 year military veteran gets 5 years in prison for walking into the Capital rotunda after Capital police held the door open for him, and did nothing more than stand there and look around, democracy and law have died a quick death and been replaced with a politically motivated and frightened dictatorship. Overturning Martin v. Boise, in light of this, would stand out like a lighthouse on a foggy shoreline as a beacon of how things SHOULD be…and we can’t have that now, can we?
It seems like the core of the question is: Is the government at the federal level required to provide a place to live for those that cannot or will not provide for themselves..
The fourth amendment protects against seizure, but it doesn’t say people can keep their possessions anywhere they want.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness seems like a stretch. People are entitled to those, but the government doesn’t have to provide them. Meanwhile, their occupying public space denies access to other citizens.
Side note: Prisons are a public provided place to live. But in this case, the government is denying prisoners the ability to provide for themselves and should be required to provide such a place.
Are you using “plainly insane” as a technical legal term?
Do you actually think that every homeless person is a “junky vagrant”? Really?
I laugh (and gag) every time I read in the MSM about the Court’s “6-to-3 Conservative majority.”
There are just two principled Constitutionalists on the Court: Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito–both of them smeared, slandered, and ripped to pieces in their confirmation hearings under the Senate Judiciary Committee’s then-Chairman, then-Senator Joseph R. Biden.
Roberts has been a spineless disgrace as Chief Justice; and as this column points out, Trump’s three “conservative,” “right-wing” appointees–all of them savagely opposed by Democrats in confirmation–have been a bitter disappointment.
The Left has little to fear from this Court, which since Trump’s 2016 campaign has almost always refused even to hear, much less deliberate and rule on, what are clearly some of the most important Constitutional issues of all, such as interstate conflicts about the illegals’ invasion and Rudy Giuliani’s compelling evidence of massive election fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.
And yet, even a 2-to-7 Constitutional minority isn’t good enough to satisfy the Left, as their scandalous, slanderous persecution of Associated Justice Thomas, and their threats to renew FDR’s failed Court-Packing scheme–and their threats to neuter, or even eliminate, the Court as a third, independent, Constitutionally defined Branch, show.