How Antipoverty Advocates Can Go On the Offensive
Abstract
In the last half of 2024, more than 100 cities “banned people from sleeping outside even if they have nowhere else to go.” The timing was not random. Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court decided, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, that local governments can criminalize homelessness despite the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth Circuit, in Martin v. Boise, had previously struck down an anti-camping ordinance, reasoning that when there are not enough beds in area shelters, such a law punished the homeless for their very status because humans must sleep somewhere. Grants Pass reversed course and gave local governments a green light to punish the homeless in the hopes of pushing them out of their jurisdiction.
Source Publication
The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project
Repository Citation
Ezra Rosser,
How Antipoverty Advocates Can Go On the Offensive,
LPE
(2025).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/pub_disc_media/616