美, 대법원 판결로 노숙자 야영지 철거 시작...대선에 영향 미칠까 [팩트매터]

In a monumental ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, local governments as well as local municipalities are now once again allowed to prosecute homeless people for sleeping on public property. This ruling, it officially closed the major loophole, which was what allowed large swaths of American cities to be absolutely covered in homeless encampments. And perhaps the best part about this ruling is that through sheer coincidence, it came just in time for the 2024 election. And I do mean sheer coincidence. I mean, these things take years to go through the legal channels. You have to hear both sides of the arguments. The justices have to deliberate. And then you never know when they're going to publish it. So there's very, very little chance that it was meant to come out before the election. But it did. In practical terms, this means that with only two months left to go until Election Day, we're now suddenly seeing cities like San Francisco, Venice Beach, Long Beach and so on begin to finally clear out their homeless encampments. However, in order to explain what this ruling says, what the backstory behind it is, as well as what it means for America moving forward, let's back up for a quick moment and start at the very beginning, right after you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that this important content can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. Now, to start with, up on your screen right now is a homeless encampment. And if you happen to live in a large city or even a medium-sized city, well, you're likely well aware that these homeless encampments are spreading, they're becoming bigger, and in some parts of the country, they are completely taking over city streets. Especially over on the West Coast, these tent cities are ubiquitous, with entire societies springing up around them, which include things like little unlicensed shops, brothels, makeshift restaurants, open-air drug markets, and so on. A Washington Post headline from three years ago described it succinctly, quote, homeless encampments are becoming part of the American landscape. Now, one of the questions that most people have when they see these homeless encampments springing up in their city is, why don't the police just shut them down? I mean, after all, they are illegal. Most normal taxpaying people understand that if you pitch the tent somewhere on the public street, you would inevitably have the police called on you. And indeed, most cities do have laws in place that make homeless camps illegal. However, what most people aren't aware of is that behind the scenes, for many, many years now, there has been a legal effort to stop the enforcement of the laws that are on the books. For instance, back in the year 2009, over in Boise, Idaho, you had a city-run homeless shelter that was shut down. And after that particular shelter was closed, six homeless individuals had nowhere else to go, and so they were found sleeping right there on public property, on the public street. However, because sleeping on public property was in violation of the city's ordinances, they were given citations. But instead of just taking the L and moving along, these six homeless individuals filed a lawsuit against the city of Boise, arguing that the city's anti-camping laws violated their constitutional rights, specifically their rights under the Eighth Amendment. Just for your reference, the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows, quote, excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. And so these homeless individuals, or rather, the nonprofit representing these homeless individuals, they were arguing that city laws, which kept them from being able to camp on city streets, represented a form of cruel and unusual punishment. After nine full years of going through the legal system, in 2018, the case found itself in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which, just for your reference, has jurisdiction over the western part of the U.S., including the nine states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. And after reviewing the case and hearing both sides of the argument, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wound up ruling in favor of the six homeless individuals. They found that the city ordinances which outlaw camping on public property did violate their Eighth Amendment rights. Or to be more specific, here's what they wrote, quote, the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter. And more specifically, what this ruling meant in practice is that if a city did not have enough beds in their shelters to put up every single homeless person, well, then that city was not allowed to enforce laws against public camping. Or as the Ninth Circuit wrote, quote, the Constitution prohibits punishing people for engaging in unavoidable human acts, such as sleeping or resting outside when they have no access to shelter. To criminalize indigent homeless people for sleeping outdoors would be to punish them based on the false premise that they had a choice in the matter. So long as there is greater number of homeless individuals in a city than the number of available beds and shelters, a city cannot punish homeless individuals for involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public. And so again, this ruling was handed down all the way back in 2018. And because of this ruling, you had cities and states in the western part of the U.S., the ones that fell under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, well, they had to get creative with how to deal with their ever-growing homeless population. And so what you began to see is that the cities, they started to criminalize other activities related to outdoor camping. A perfect example of this happened in a city called Grants Pass, located in the state of Oregon. It's a fairly small city located close to the Oregon-California border, and it has a population of only about 38,000 people. And like many other cities in Oregon, Grants Pass began to have homeless encampments pop up, with tents being pitched right there on public streets. However, because of the earlier ruling from the Ninth Circuit, the city government of Grants Pass, they were not able to simply prosecute people for camping. And so instead, they attempted to use an administrative approach to deal with the problem. Quote, the city enforced their public camping ordinance through civil administrative fines. The city's ordinance criminalized repeated violations after administrative fines were issued, and they prohibited the use of certain sleeping accessories, such as blankets and pillows. Meaning that, for one, if you were caught sleeping on the street, you couldn't be arrested, but you could be given a fine. Secondly, if you were caught multiple times and you didn't pay your fines, then you could be held criminally liable for those fines. And then thirdly, you were not allowed to use things like tents, blankets, and pillows when sleeping on the street. Essentially, this method was a workaround to deal with the earlier ruling from the Ninth Circuit. Instead of criminalizing the actual act of sleeping on the street, well, instead, they used a form of administrative enforcement, using fines and criminalizing other acts, such as bringing pillows and blankets. And so the city began to hand out fines and tickets to the homeless people who were sleeping around on the streets of Grants Pass. However, what wound up happening was that three of the homeless people who were sleeping on the street, they filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing that these new ordinances, which fined them for sleeping in public, was, just like the previous case, a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights. Specifically, that this was an excessive fine, as well as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. And wouldn't you know it, the trial judge, he agreed with the homeless plaintiffs, writing this in the initial opinion. Quote, the trial court judge agreed with the plaintiffs, finding parts of the city's ordinances unconstitutional in light of the precedent that was said by the Boise case, and he issued an injunction prohibiting the city from enforcement. The court determined that although the Boise case only involved criminal prosecution, administrative enforcement that ultimately could result in criminal enforcement also violates the Eighth Amendment, and that certain basic sleeping elements were within the protection under the precedent. Now, the city of Grants Pass, they appealed that decision all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and once again, the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the homeless. And in so doing, they expanded their earlier decision, the one from 2018, to now, quote, concerning sleeping in public, but also administrative enforcement that could result in criminal enforcement, and redefining the term sleeping to include rudimentary forms of protection from the elements, as well as overnight sleeping in vehicles. Meaning that according to this ruling, not only can cities not criminally enforce anti-camping laws, but also, they can't enforce those laws through fines or any other punitive measures. Basically, this ruling from the Ninth Circuit, as well as the previous ruling in the Boise case, it made it such that if you lived in the western part of the U.S., and you had a homeless encampment spring up in your neighborhood or your park, the police could literally do nothing about it, even if they wanted to. Now, the lawyers representing the city of Grants Pass, they did not take this decision lying down, and instead, they appealed that ruling again, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, writing this as a part of their appeal, quote, And then, they simply asked the U.S. Supreme Court to answer one simple question, quote, Now, interestingly, this appeal of theirs was actually strengthened by the fact that you had the attorneys general of 20 different states, as well as Governor Gavin Newsom of California, all ask the U.S. Supreme Court to go ahead and please take up the case. And just as an interesting aside, here was what Gavin Newsom said when he was urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, and do note that this was said at the end of last year, just as the presidential election was starting to kick into gear, quote, While I agree with the basic principle that a city should not criminalize homeless individuals for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go within that city's boundaries, courts continue to reach well beyond that narrow limit to block any number of reasonable efforts to protect homeless individuals and the broader public from the harms of uncontrolled encampments. Courts have tied the hands of state and local governments that seek to use common sense approaches to clean our streets and provide help for unhoused Californians living in inhumane conditions. And then also interestingly, in a separate statement that he gave to Politico, Governor Gavin Newsom added this, quote, And indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court, they took up the case, they heard both sides of the argument, The ruling was a 6-3 decision split neatly along ideological lines, with justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, as well as Sam Alito, all voting to overturn the earlier decision from the Ninth Circuit. And in so doing, they ruled that all cities in America, not just in the West Coast, but throughout all of America, they are allowed to enforce laws that target homeless encampments. Writing for the majority of the court, you had Justice Neil Gorsuch write the following, quote, Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not. Then in this ruling, he goes on to write how in different communities across the country, you have different charities, different associations, different elected representatives, public officials, police officers, mental health professionals, and many, many other people using their unique skills and efforts to try and solve the homeless situation within their own local communities. And he writes that in a democratic system like America, this is the right of the people and cannot be taken away by some federal judge. Quote, Yes, people will disagree over which policy responses are best. They may experiment with one set of approaches only to find later another set works better. They may find certain responses more appropriate for some communities than others. But in our democracy, that is their right. Nor can a handful of federal judges begin to match the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding how best to handle a pressing social question like homelessness. The Constitution's Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place, dictate this nation's And therefore, the earlier decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was reversed. And indeed, shortly after this decision came down from the U.S. Supreme Court, homeless encampments throughout the U.S. began to get cleared out. For instance, over in Grants Pass, Oregon, the place where this lawsuit originated from, just last month, the city police began clearing out homeless people from both the public parks as well as from the sidewalks. The homeless, they were moved into one of four different outdoor sites. Just for your reference, these four sites were established by the city council to be used by homeless people to sleep in if they had no other place to go. Likewise, over in California, the impact of the Supreme Court ruling was huge. In fact, it's fair to say that in California, which has about one full third of the nation's homeless population, the Supreme Court ruling was an absolute game changer. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down, you had Governor Gavin Newsom order local governments throughout the entirety of the state to either clean up the homeless encampments in their jurisdictions or risk losing state funding for different projects and programs. In fact, Governor Gavin Newsom issued this executive order right here, in which he directed all of the agencies and departments under his direct authority to clean up their encampments ASAP. And apparently, he is taking it seriously, evidenced by both videos and photos that recently came out showing Governor Gavin Newsom himself wearing a t-shirt, jeans and gloves, cleaning up an encampment site over in the city of LA. With or without the optics, however, the streets are really beginning to get cleaned up. Encampments across California, including Venice Beach, Long Beach, San Francisco and other cities are really starting to disappear. Although apparently, the Los Angeles government is actually fighting the governor's order and they're not complying, which actually gets to the main point here, which is that now, after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down, all across America, courts no longer view the Eighth Amendment as being a barrier to cleaning up homeless encampments. And so municipalities, cities, as well as states are now fully empowered to deal with the problem, meaning that if they don't deal with the problem, that is a choice. Their hands are no longer tied. They are not being stopped by some random decision from the Ninth Circuit. Instead, now, they are choosing not to clean up the tents. Just something that's worth thinking about. And actually, I'd love to know your thoughts. Do you think that these tent encampment cleanup efforts, specifically the ones over in California, will have any effect on the upcoming election? Please leave your comments in the comment section below. I'll be reading through them later tonight, as well as into the week. And also, if you'd like to read through any of my research notes for today's episode, those will be found in the description box that's right below this video. And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed, most importantly.