In a flurry of SCOTUS decisions that have seen a clustering of losses for liberals and pro-government deep-staters, including a reversal of the Chevron Deference decision which crushes the encroaching administrative state, and a huge victory for the politically prosecuted Jan 6 protesters, today's Supreme Court ruling that may be the most adverse impact on Democrats everywhere, was the decision to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors, even in the mostly socialist West Coast, where shelter space is lacking yet where the population of the homeless is highest due to the generally nice weather (at least until the icebergs melt later today).
The case is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue of America's rising wave of homeless democrat.
In a 6-3 decision, split as usual along ideological lines, the high court reversed a ruling by a deeply liberal San Francisco-based appeals court that found outdoor sleeping bans amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Which is only appropriate since San Francisco recently has descended into 8th circle of homeless hell territory, with drug needless, piles of human excrement, and armies of homeless zombies covering the streets of the once great city.
The majority found that the 8th Amendment prohibition does not extend to bans on outdoor sleeping bans.
“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “A handful of federal judges cannot begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness.”
Gorsuch suggested that people who have no choice but to sleep outdoors could raise that as a “necessity defense,” if they are ticketed or otherwise punished for violating a camping ban.
Or they can just stop taking drugs, clean themselves up and find a job, but that may require actual effort. Hence, easier to just vote Democrat.
A bipartisan group of leaders had argued the ruling against the bans made it harder to manage outdoor encampments encroaching on sidewalks and other public spaces in nine Western states. That includes California, which is home to one-third of the country’s homeless population.
“Cities across the West report that the 9th Circuit’s involuntary test has created intolerable uncertainty for them,” Gorsuch wrote.
Homeless advocates, on the other hand, said that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep would criminalize homelessness and ultimately make the crisis worse. Cities had been allowed to regulate encampments but couldn’t bar people from sleeping outdoors.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” said communist Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, reading from the bench a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues.
“Punishing people for their status is ‘cruel and unusual’ under the Eighth Amendment,” she wrote in the dissent. ”It is quite possible, indeed likely, that these and similar ordinances will face more days in court.”
It wasn't clear how "status" is a factor in determining how someone ends up homeless but nobody every accused Sotomayor of being rational.
The case came from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which appealed a ruling striking down local ordinances that fined people $295 for sleeping outside after tents began crowding public parks. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the nine Western states, has held since 2018 that such bans violate the Eighth Amendment in areas where there aren’t enough shelter beds.
Friday’s ruling comes after homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12% last year to its highest reported level thanks to Bidenomics, as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people.
It's only ironic that the homeless, most of whom are Democrats and voted for Joe Biden, ended up there thanks to their vote. It turns out actions do have consequences.
More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using a yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. Nearly half of them sleep outside. Older adults, LGBTQ+ people and people of color are disproportionately affected, advocates said. In Oregon, a lack of mental health and addiction resources has also helped fuel the crisis.
Finally, we can't help but wonder what would have happened if Soros had diversified better, and had saved a few billion to retain control of SCOTUS instead of just blowing most of his money on regional courts and various DAs across the country.
