Sotomayor strongly disagrees with Supreme Court decision on homelessness

Unconscientious and unconstitutional.

This is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor described on Friday the punishment of people who sleep outside and have nowhere else to go.

“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” she wrote in her dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision upholding an Oregon city’s anti-camping ordinance designed to prevent homeless people from settling there.

To underscore her opposition, Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench. It was not the first time in recent weeks that she has emerged as a voice for the court’s liberal wing, including one that she believes could undermine same-sex marriage.

On Friday, she accused the majority of focusing almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and not enough on the “most vulnerable in our society.”

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Sotomayor shared some of their stories, including that of a Nashville man who was having trouble finding housing because he was frequently arrested for homelessness. His social worker gave him a T-shirt that read, “Please don’t arrest me, my social worker will take care of my housing.”

Sotomayor said the majority is deluding itself when it says that homelessness is not a crime in the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, because the camping ban applies to actions, not people.

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“Under the city’s laws,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, “it makes no difference whether the accused defendant is homeless, a backpacker passing through town, or a student leaving his dorm room to camp on the lawn of a city building in protest.”

This view, Sotomayor wrote, “describes a fantasy.”

In reality, she said, only homeless people get tickets.

Sotomayor, one of three liberal justices who opposed the ruling, said the majority ignores the half a million Americans who live without shelter every night. She said punishing people for homelessness was “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment.

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While acknowledging that local governments face a difficult task in addressing the housing crisis, Sotomayor said people are homeless due to “complex and interconnected issues,” ranging from stagnant wages and rising housing costs to domestic violence and mental health disabilities.

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