Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

High court upholds law criminalizing homelessness, making things worse

People protesting laws against homelessness

People protest outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepared to hear Grants Pass v. Johnson on April 22.

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Herring is an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, co-author of an amicus brief in Johnson v. Grants Pass and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

In late June, the Supreme Court decided in the case of Johnson v. Grants Pass that the government can criminalize homelessness. In the court’s 6-3 decision, split along ideological lines, the conservative justices ruled that bans on sleeping in public when there are no shelter beds available do not violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

This ruling will only make homelessness worse. It may also propel U.S. localities into a “race to the bottom” in passing increasingly punitive policies aimed at locking up or banishing the unhoused.


Like many West Coast localities, the town of Grants Pass, Ore., suffers from an acute affordable housing crisis and no homeless shelters for adults. In 2013, the city council hosted a meeting to “identify solutions to the current vagrancy problem.” Rather than expanding shelter or housing, the council passed ordinances that made it illegal to sleep outside with blankets, pillows or even cardboard. Every violation triggers a $275 fine, and after two citations a person may be issued an exclusion order across all public property.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This amounts to banishment from Grants Pass or incarceration for simply being homeless. As the city council president at the time said, “The point is to make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road.”

While the Grants Pass scheme may be uniquely cruel, local governments enforce ordinances against standing, sitting, resting and sleeping in public space across the United States. Now that the minimal guardrails of legal protections for the homeless have been removed by the Supreme Court, it is more important than ever for local lawmakers not to fall prey to populist outrage to ramp up punitive crackdowns. They should instead heed the decades of social science research that shows them to be both counterproductive and cruel.

Synthesizing over 50 published research papers on the impacts of these laws from small towns to large cities, a group of social scientists including myself filed a brief for the Supreme Court in the case. The research consistently arrived at a broad consensus. The enforcement of anti-homeless laws not only fails to reduce homelessness in public space beyond a few blocks, it also traps people in homelessness longer and exacerbates health conditions, all while creating numerous barriers to shelter, treatment, jobs and housing.

Enforcement of anti-homeless laws has been shown to have various negative health impacts. For instance, a 2021 California study of 3,200 adults experiencing homelessness in eight counties found that 36 percent had their belongings taken and/or destroyed by local agencies while enforcing anti-homeless ordinances in just six months. Participants in this study and in other large surveys taken in Denver and Honolulu reported having lost life-saving medicine needed to treat HIV and Hepatitis C, ID and benefit cards, walkers, canes, crutches, and wheelchairs. Meanwhile, CDC scientists acknowledge that clearing encampments through enforcement increases the spread of infectious disease, increasing public health risks.

A study surveying doctors and medical providers identified widespread frustration with enforcement. The houseless regularly avoid appointments or even hospitalization from fear that their property will be destroyed. Many lose benefits and prescriptions due to short incarcerations. All of this leads to negative health impacts, increased emergency room utilization and exorbitant health care costs on already strained systems.

Many people experience incarceration for their first time due to their homelessness, but the consequences have lasting effects. Incarceration often means a loss of employment due to absence and increased difficulty securing new employment stemming from their newly acquired criminal record. The mark of a criminal record also leads to exclusions in the housing market due to landlord discrimination.

Tickets are often viewed as a civil infraction, but they can have the same punitive impacts. Unpaid citations in most U.S. localities result in arrest warrants, spoiled credit, suspensions of driver’s licenses, and erect multiple barriers to exiting homelessness. In San Francisco, a study found that 90 percent of the 10,000 to 15,000 citations given to homeless people each year for sitting, camping or loitering go unpaid — no surprise considering the poverty of those cited.

Not only are those with warrants often barred from work and housing, they are also restricted from residential drug and mental health treatment programs, as well as homeless shelters in many states. Rather than working as sticks to push people towards better life choices and opportunity, studies consistently find that enforcement more often pulls people deeper into poverty and extends their homelessness.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that these laws are ineffective, costly and harmful, they are politically popular. For politicians in power, enforcement reduces public outrage.

Such laws have been consistently found to do nothing to curb wider collective urban disorder or reduce homelessness in public space. But enforcement scratches the itch of individual angry residents and business owners dialing 911 to have their block spot-cleaned of homelessness. Meanwhile, political challengers often campaign on even harsher ordinances, blaming the persistence of homelessness on the incumbent’s tolerance. Both positions distract from the real issue of the growing affordable housing crisis at the problem’s root, which politicians are weary to address.

Even if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the homeless plaintiffs, the truth is little would have changed without further political and legal pressure for reforms. And though Friday’s ruling is a huge step backwards, it won’t stop the ongoing legal cases to protect unhoused people’s rights on Fourth, Fifth, and 14th amendment grounds of rights to property, due process and equal access to shelter.

Nonetheless, the court’s decision now frees localities of even the lowest level of accountability in its criminal treatment of homelessness. It will also fuel political competition between cities, counties and even states to pass increasingly punitive policies as they try to push their unhoused residents “down the road.”

Read More

While Pledging To Clean Up Toxic Chemicals, EPA Guts Hundreds of Environmental Grants

EPA Administrator Zeldin speaks with reporters on Long Island, NY.

Courtesy EPA via Flickr.

While Pledging To Clean Up Toxic Chemicals, EPA Guts Hundreds of Environmental Grants

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration promised to combat toxic “forever chemicals,” while conversely canceling nearly 800 grants aimed at addressing environmental injustices, including in communities plagued with PFAS contamination.

In a court filing, the Environmental Protection Agency revealed for the first time that it intends to cancel 781 environmental justice grants, nearly double what had previously been disclosed.

Keep ReadingShow less
Policy Changes Could Derail Michigan’s Clean Energy Goals

New clean energy manufacturing plants, including for EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, are being built across states like Michigan, Georgia, and Ohio.

Steve/Adobe Stock

Policy Changes Could Derail Michigan’s Clean Energy Goals

In recent years, Michigan has been aggressive in its approach to clean energy: It’s invested millions of dollars in renewable energy infrastructure, created training programs for jobs in the electric vehicle industry, and set a goal of moving the state to 100% carbon neutrality by 2050.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other state officials aim to make the Great Lakes State a leader in clean energy manufacturing by bringing jobs and investments to local communities while also tackling pollution, which continues to wreak havoc on the environment.

Now Michigan’s clean energy efforts have seemingly hit a wall of uncertainty as President Donald Trump’s administration takes ongoing actions to roll back federal climate regulations.

“We’ve seen nothing less than an unprecedented, all-out assault on our environment and our democracy,” said Bentley Johnson, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters’ federal government affairs director.

The clean energy sector has grown rapidly in the United States since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Congress appropriated $370 billion under the IRA, and White House officials at the time touted it as the country’s largest investment in clean energy.

According to Climate Power, a national public relations and advocacy organization dedicated to climate justice, Michigan was the No. 1 state in the nation in 2024 in its number of clean energy projects; from 2022-2024, the state announced 74 projects totalling over 26,000 jobs and roughly $27 billion in federal funding.

Trump has long been critical of the country’s climate initiatives and development of clean energy technology. He’s previously made false claims that climate change is a hoax and wind turbines cause cancer. Since taking office again in January, Trump has tried to pause IRA funding and signed an executive order to boost coal production.

Additionally, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March that the agency had canceled more than 400 environmental justice grants to be used to improve air and water quality in disadvantaged communities. Senate Democrats, who released a full list of the canceled grants, accused the EPA of illegally terminating the contracts, through which funds were appropriated by Congress under the IRA. Of those 400 grants, 15 were allocated for projects in Michigan, including one to restore housing units in Kalamazoo and another to transform Detroit area food pantries and soup kitchens into emergency shelters for those in need.

Johnson said the federal government reversing course on the allotted funding has left community groups who were set to receive it in the lurch.

“That just seems wrong, to take away these public benefits that there was already an agreement — Congress has already appropriated or committed to spending this, to handing this money out, and the rug is being pulled out from under them,” Johnson said.

Climate Power has tracked clean energy projects across the country totaling $56.3 billion in projected funding and over 50,000 potential jobs that have been stalled or canceled since Trump was elected in November. Michigan accounts for seven of those projects, including Nel Hydrogen’s plans to build an electrolyzer manufacturing facility in Plymouth.

Nel Hydrogen announced an indefinite delay in the construction of its Plymouth factory in February 2025. Wilhelm Flinder, the company’s head of investor relations, communications, and marketing, cited uncertainty regarding the IRA’s tax credits for clean hydrogen production as a factor in the company’s decision, according to reporting by Hometownlife.com. The facility was expected to invest $400 million in the local community and to create over 500 people when it started production.

“America is losing nearly a thousand jobs a day because of Trump’s war against cheaper, faster, and cleaner energy. Congressional Republicans have a choice: get in line with Trump’s job-killing energy agenda or take a stand to protect jobs and lower costs for American families,” Climate Power executive director Lori Lodes said in a March statement.

Opposition groups make misleading claims about the benefits of renewable energy, such as the reliability of wind or solar energy and the land used for clean energy projects, in order to stir up public distrust, Johnson said.

In support of its clean energy goals, the state fronted some of its own taxpayer dollars for several projects to complement the federal IRA money. Johnson said the strategy was initially successful, but with sudden shifts in federal policies, it’s potentially become a risk, because the state would be unable to foot the bill entirely on its own.

The state still has its self-imposed clean energy goals to reach in 25 years, but whether it will meet that deadline is hard to predict, Johnson said. Michigan’s clean energy laws are still in place and, despite Trump’s efforts, the IRA remains intact for now.

“Thanks to the combination — I like to call it a one-two punch of the state-passed Clean Energy and Jobs Act … and the Inflation Reduction Act, with the two of those intact — as long as we don’t weaken it — and then the combination of the private sector and technological advancement, we can absolutely still make it,” Johnson said. “It is still going to be tough, even if there wasn’t a single rollback.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Keep ReadingShow less
A Missed Opportunity

Broken speech bubbles.

Getty Images, MirageC

A Missed Opportunity

en español

In a disappointing turn of events, Connecticut has chosen to follow the precedent set by President Donald Trump’s English-Only Executive Order, effectively disregarding the federal mandates of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Keep ReadingShow less
World Vaccine Congress Washington Tackles Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric in U.S. Politics

The World Vaccine Congress Washington is held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, April 23, 2025

(Erin Drumm/Medill New Service)

World Vaccine Congress Washington Tackles Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric in U.S. Politics

WASHINGTON—A vaccine policy expert challenged attendees of the World Vaccine Congress Washington to imagine a deadly disease spreading in various places around the country. We have the tools to stop it, but lawmakers were instead debating whether or not to use them.

In fact, that describes what is currently happening across the United States, according to Rehka Lakshmanan, M.H.A.

Keep ReadingShow less