A federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday that arresting homeless people for sleeping, sitting or lying on sidewalks and other public property when other shelter is not available was cruel and unusual punishment.
The 2-1 ruling, by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, essentially invalidated a 37-year-old Los Angeles ordinance that the police have used to clear homeless people off the streets.
Legal experts said the case, which they believed to be the first involving the rights of homeless people in public spaces to reach the federal appellate level, would be closely followed by other cities facing the same problems.
The Los Angeles ordinance had gone largely unenforced until recent years, when the police began cracking down on illicit behavior in the Skid Row area of downtown, which has one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the country.
The ordinance states that "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way" under threat of a US$1,000 fine and possible jail term of up to six months.
restrictive
The court of appeals, in striking down the convictions of six people charged under the ordinance, called it "one of the most restrictive municipal laws regulating public spaces in the United States" and cited the example of other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, Tucson, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, that have enacted similar ordinances but limited enforcement to certain times of day or designated places.
The Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, prohibits Los Angeles "from punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote.
The Los Angeles police, in response to the ruling, released a statement that said: "The condition of being homeless in and of itself is not a crime and should not be treated as such. But the criminal element that preys upon the homeless and mentally ill will be targeted, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
It added, "The department will continue to work with the city's political leadership and the courts to find solutions to help keep the homeless safe and off the streets."
A spokeswoman for the city attorney's office, Contessa Mankiewicz, said, "We are disappointed, and we are reviewing our options."
appeal
If the city chooses to appeal, it could seek a review of the decision by the full court or pursue a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.
The police in Los Angeles, which has been wrestling with how to reduce a homeless population that by some counts is the largest in the country, have used the ordinance in an effort to clean up Skid Row, a 50-block area east of downtown that has long been home to the down and out.
There, some 10,000 to 12,000 homeless people live near new condominiums and apartment buildings that have arisen in an explosion of gentrification.
limited shelter
The ruling said there was shelter for 9,000 to 10,000 homeless people in that area, leaving about 1,000 people or more without a roof over their heads.
"So long as there are a greater number of homeless individuals in Los Angeles than the number of available beds, the city may not enforce" the ordinance, the judges said.
The case was filed in February 2003 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the National Lawyers Guild on behalf of six homeless people who had been ticketed in Skid Row and in some cases jailed briefly or ordered to pay fines.
The appeals court's ruling on Friday overturns a district court ruling in favor of the city.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS