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.

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

Just the Facts: Impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Health Care

U.S. President Donald Trump takes the stage during a reception for Republican members of the House of Representatives in the East Room of the White House on July 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump thanked GOP lawmakers for passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla

Just the Facts: Impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Health Care

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

What are the new Medicaid work requirements, and are they more lenient or more restrictive than what previously existed?

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Constitution
Imagining constitutions
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

A Bold Civic Renaissance for America’s 250th

Every September 17, Americans mark Constitution Day—the anniversary of the signing of our nation’s foundational charter in 1787. The day is often commemorated with classroom lessons and speaking events, but it is more than a ceremonial anniversary. It is an invitation to ask: What does it mean to live under a constitution that was designed as a charge for each generation to study, debate, and uphold its principles? This year, as we look toward the semiquincentennial of our nation in 2026, the question feels especially urgent.

The decade between 1776 and 1787 was defined by a period of bold and intentional nation and national identity building. In that time, the United States declared independence, crafted its first national government, won a war to make their independence a reality, threw out the first government when it failed, and forged a new federal government to lead the nation. We stand at a similar inflection point. The coming decade, from the nation’s semiquincentennial in 2026 to the Constitution’s in 2037, offers a parallel opportunity to reimagine and reinvigorate our American civic culture. Amid the challenges we face today, there’s an opportunity to study, reflect, and prepare to write the next chapters in our American story—it is as much about the past 250 years, as it is about the next 250 years. It will require the same kind of audacious commitment to building for the future that was present at the nation’s outset.

Keep ReadingShow less
Texas redistricting maps

Two bills have been introduced to Congress that aim to ban mid-decade redistricting on the federal level and contain provisions making an exception for mid-decade redistricting.

Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images

Congress Bill Spotlight: Anti-Rigging Act, Banning Mid-Decade Redistricting As Texas and California Are Attempting

Trump claims Republicans are “entitled” to five more Texas House seats.

Context: in the news

In August, the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature approved a rare “mid-decade” redistricting for U.S. House seats, with President Donald Trump’s encouragement.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independent Madness- or How the Cheshire Cat Can Slay the Gerrymander

The Cheshire Cat (John Tenniel) Devouring the Gerrymander (Elkanah Tisdale )

Independent Madness- or How the Cheshire Cat Can Slay the Gerrymander

America has a long, if erratic, history of expanding its democratic franchise. Over the last two centuries, “representation” grew to embrace former slaves, women, and eighteen-year-olds, while barriers to voting like literacy tests and outright intimidation declined. Except, that is, for one key group, Independents and Third-party voters- half the electorate- who still struggle to gain ballot access and exercise their authentic democratic voice.

Let’s be realistic: most third parties aren't deluding themselves about winning a single-member election, even if they had equal ballot access. “Independents” – that sprawling, 40-percent-strong coalition of diverse policy positions, people, and gripes – are too diffuse to coalesce around a single candidate. So gerrymanderers assume they will reluctantly vote for one of the two main parties. Relegating Independents to mere footnotes in the general election outcome, since they’re also systematically shut out of party primaries, where 9 out of 10 elections are determined.

Keep ReadingShow less