'This Case Is Egregiously Flawed And Deeply Damaging': Homeless Have Fundamental Right To Sleep In The Streets Following Ludicrous Ruling From Liberal Judges

Under a startling new ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court in Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, a city in Oregon has been told that it, and by extension every other city in the nation, is powerless to stop homeless encampments from plaguing them. The decision from the court is a radical expansion of the 2018 opinion in Martin v. City of Boise.  

In the 2018 ruling, the court found that the 'Cruel and Unusual punishments clause' of 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." Writing for The Blaze, contributor and attorney Daniel Horowitz observed the absurd nature of the ruling, "You know, because somehow enforcing commonsense public order laws since the dawn of our founding is tantamount to physically cruel punishment targeting an individual!"

The city will reportedly appeal Johnson v. City of Grants Pass to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, as Horowitz notes, SCOTUS has disappointingly refused to hear the underlying ruling of Martin v. City of Boise to date. But some hope may be found in the dissent penned and published by senior Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, joined by several retired and therefore non-voting justices.

O’Scannlain wrote, "With this decision, our Circuit’s jurisprudence now effectively guarantees a personal federal constitutional ‘right’ for individuals to camp or to sleep on sidewalks and in parks, playgrounds, and other public places in defiance of traditional health, safety, and welfare laws—a dubious holding premised on a fanciful interpretation of the Eighth Amendment."

“We are the first and only federal circuit to have divined such a strange and sweeping mandate from the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.”

He adds authoritatively, "Our jurisprudence in this case is egregiously flawed and deeply damaging—at war with constitutional text, history, and tradition, and Supreme Court precedent."

Damningly, O’Scannlain arrives at the point that "Indeed, one might question whether the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause has anything to do with the jurisprudence embraced by Grants Pass—which authorizes a plaintiff who has never been assigned a “punishment,” let alone one that is 'cruel and unusual,' to challenge traditional anti-vagrancy regulations under the Clause."

He explains clearly, "Instead, it only prohibits “punishments” (i.e., pain or suffering inflicted for a crime or offense) that are “cruel” (i.e., marked by savagery and barbarity) and “unusual” (i.e., not in common use), reflecting a constitutional prohibition originally and traditionally understood to forbid the government from “authorizing particular forms or ‘modes’ of punishment—specifically, cruel methods of punishment that are not regularly or customarily employed.” ...(“[b]reaking on the wheel,” “flaying alive,” and “maiming, mutilating, and scourging to death” (cleaned up)). Constitutional text, history, and tradition make clear— contrary to Grants Pass’s holding—that the Clause was not originally understood to displace the authority of legislatures to prohibit historically proscribable acts." 

Simply, the Eighth Amendment in no way, shape, or form prohibits a city, state, county et. al., from prohibiting public vagrancy, a legal concept that dates back to antiquity and has been enforced throughout America's history after being contemporarily recognized by the framers of the Constitution. It certainly doesn't confer a "right" to "involuntarily homeless" persons to sleep wherever they deem fit.

Should the case find its way to the Supreme Court and into the hands of an overwhelming originalist bench, namely with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett being vocally self-described as such with Justice Samuel Alito calling himself a “practical originalist,” per The Kansas City Star, the ruling will likely find itself shattered on the impregnable rocks of common sense and a historically accurate reading of the Constitution.

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