The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case out of Southern Oregon that could make sweeping policy changes to the way cities address homelessness and enforce rules around public camping.
In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Grants Pass from enforcing public camping ordinances through fines, saying it violated the cruel and unusual punishment provision of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. That ruling built off a 2019 decision out of Boise, Idaho, where the same court found a person cannot be criminally punished for sleeping in public if there’s nowhere else for them to go.
Fines as a punishment really suck
What about a 5% of your total wealth fine rounded down to the nearest $100 (if we could accurately find and report the wealth of individuals).
Houseless people would get a big fat $0 fine and that rich fucker who could usually just write the fee off as an incidental would be hurting.
So if you have $25,000 paid into a car loan but no liquid assets the government forces the sale of your car to collect their $1,250. Maybe they sell it fast for less than it’s worth. Now you have no car and lost a great deal of money.
Maybe your wealth is in your home.
You think camping without a permit warrants taking 5% of everything you have? That’s insanity. What if you do it twice? What other offences might you also want to collect 5% for? Littering or jaywalking? Smoking?
Let’s say you have $1000 in the bank and nothing else. The government wants their $50 but you don’t pay because you need that money. Now you have to pay a late fee or something, probably get arrested and put in front of a judge, spend time in jail for not paying?
That’s not the way
1/365 of your yearly income makes sense, it’s like missing a day of work. 1/20 of your “total wealth” for camping is insane though.
Well 5% really doesn’t match this crime, I just selected the number randomly as an example.
I also could have worded it better, but I was trying to get at having a limit, $100 for example, where if the fine is below that number, you round down to zero. It could maybe just be paperwork or something
Does cruel and unusual punishment apply here?
My limited understanding of the topic is that ‘cruel but usual’ and ‘unusual but not cruel’ can invalidate the charge. And unfortunately, the mistreatment of the homeless could be seen as usual.
It won’t apply in front of this court. The USA, where corporations are considered people but the homeless are not.
It should apply, if only the rich werent the ruling class. Id consider taking money from someone who has nothing/very little to be cruel.
It’s either or.
No, but the problem is that SCOTUS likes to ignore the consequences of the 1A right to assemble (which is why you have abridged rights during a traffic stop - you have no right to travel to your assembly point, even though it’s a necessary right in order to have freedom of assembly), which is what actually covers the general right of people to exist in public, since they must in order to assemble.
