Fresh lawsuit hits Oregon city at the heart of Supreme Court ruling on homeless encampments

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The small Oregon city at the heart of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to enforce homeless camping bans is facing a fresh lawsuit over its camping rules, as advocates find new ways to challenge them in a legal landscape shifted by the high court’s decision.

Disability Rights Oregon sued Grants Pass on Thursday, accusing it of violating a state law requiring cities’ camping regulations to be “objectively reasonable.”

“I don’t think that the bad decision from the Supreme Court is the end of homeless advocacy,” Tom Stenson, the group’s deputy legal director, told The Associated Press. “I think we’re going to see that it continues, because the problem isn’t going away. The need for housing is not going away.”

Mike Zacchino, the information coordinator for Grants Pass, said in an email that the city had no comment.

Last June’s Supreme Court ruling made the southern Oregon mountain town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis. It ushered in a new era of homeless policy by allowing cities across the U.S. to ban sleeping outside and fine people for doing so, even when there aren’t enough shelter beds.

In Grants Pass — where officials have struggled for years to address a homelessness crisis that has divided residents — the decision paved the way for the new mayor and City Council members elected in November to crack down on camping upon taking office.

The high court decision overturned a ruling from a California-based appeals court that found camping bans when shelter space is lacking amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. It enabled Grants Pass to enforce local ordinances barring camping on city property such as parks and sidewalks.

Grants Pass has just one overnight shelter for adults — the Gospel Rescue Mission — and its rules requiring attendance at religious services and barring pets, alcohol, drugs and smoking mean many won’t stay there.

After the ruling was issued, the City Council designated two city-owned properties as the areas where the town’s hundreds of homeless people would be allowed to stay.

But last week, the new council closed the larger of the two campsites — which housed roughly 120 tents, the complaint says — and made the remaining smaller one only open from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., forcing people to pack up their belongings every morning and carry them throughout the day with no place where they can legally set down their things.

“It wants to make being homeless in Grants Pass so unpleasant that people go elsewhere,” Disability Rights Oregon said of the city in its complaint. “Despite the presence of numerous elderly, ill, and disabled people on site, the city increased its draconian restrictions in the dead of winter leaving hundreds of people with no legal option for their continued survival.”

Five homeless people with disabilities who live in Grants Pass are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They include people who use wheelchairs and canes, as well as people suffering from the aftermath of a stroke or missing part of their limbs, according to the complaint.

Among them is Janine Harris, who has lived in Grants Pass for over two decades and became homeless four years ago. The 57-year-old, who says she struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, lived at the larger city-sanctioned campsite that closed last week.

“A lot of us do not have any idea where to go,” she told the AP on Thursday. “I really am hurting, physically and mentally.”

Harris said she joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff because she wants city officials to recognize that homeless people are human beings. “Just because we don’t live in a house doesn’t mean that we’re not,” she said.

The complaint says the camping restrictions discriminate against people with disabilities and violate state law, which states that cities’ rules regarding when, where and how homeless people can sleep or keep warm and dry outdoors must be “objectively reasonable.”

“The City has discriminated against people with disabilities by imposing standards for participation in its camping program that require people to move themselves and their own belongings frequently and for no good purpose,” the complaint says. “People with physical disabilities affecting their movement or chronic illnesses that make frequent lifting, carrying, and walking distances difficult or impossible have been and will be cited and prosecuted for violating city ordinances regarding camping.”

Disability Rights Oregon is asking the court to block the city from enforcing its camping rules.

Homelessness continues to be a nationwide crisis. Last year, it increased 18% in a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and an increase in migrants in several parts of the country.

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This story has been updated to correct that New York did not ban sleeping outside and to clarify that cities across the U.S. are now allowed to do so.