Case over Grants Pass homeless policy poses ‘dire threat’ to LGBTQ+ community

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – The Supreme Court of the United States is set to hear arguments in late April over the constitutionality of homelessness policies in Grants Pass, Ore. — but one organization is arguing the policies disproportionately harm the LGBTQ+ community.

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the city is challenging a lower court ruling that found the city’s ordinances banning public camping violated the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.

However, the Center for Constitutional Rights is arguing that the city’s homelessness policies pose a “dire threat” to the LGBTQ+ community, and say a ruling in favor of the city could harm hundreds of thousands of unhoused people across the U.S.

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On April 3, CCR filed an amicus brief — or a “friend of the court” document — offering their expertise on LGBTQ+ issues to the high court. The amicus brief is supported by 46 LGBTQ+ rights organizations, arguing the Supreme Court should rule against Grants Pass’ ordinances for violating the Eighth Amendment.

Court documents say the Grants Pass Municipal Code included five different ordinances related to sleeping or camping in public places, with each of the ordinances imposing a civil fine of up to several hundred dollars.

Repeat offenders of the ordinances faced a ban from all city property. If a homeless resident was still found on city property after the ban, they could have been punished for trespassing.

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According to CCR, the city’s policies disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community, which is unhoused at “extremely high rates” due to discrimination and bias and are “more likely than straight, cisgender people to be unhoused, due to systemic causes,” including family rejection, lack of safe shelters, and discrimination in schools, employment and housing.

CCR said homelessness is prevalent among LGBTQ+ youth — and even though this group makes up less than 10% of the U.S. population, LGBTQ+ youth account for 40% of all unhoused youth, and 65% of youth experiencing chronic homelessness.

The organization added that transgender people are eight times more likely to have been recently unhoused compared to their straight, cisgender counterparts and that LGBTQ+ youth of color are also more likely to be unhoused.

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“It really starts with being able to have a home and not be criminalized for using your agency to sleep in a place where you feel safe to sleep. A lot of shelter systems are hostile towards LGBTQIA+ or will openly refuse to serve them or won’t protect them when they experience harassment or mistreatment within the shelter system,” said Mikaila Hernández, a Bertha Justice Fellow and CCR attorney.

“In Grants Pass in particular, there’s no municipal shelter system and the only consistent overnight shelter is the Gospel Rescue Mission and it’s a high-barrier shelter, which means that it requires daily Christian service attendance, abide by other rules, and of course, it’s not exactly a welcoming environment to the queer community and that’s not exactly a safe place for them to stay,” Hernández continued. “We want to be able to advocate for folks to be able to make that choice if they need to stay in their vehicle, or perhaps sleep in the park with rudimentary protection from the elements. They shouldn’t be criminalized for making a choice that prioritizes their own personal safety and wellbeing.”

“We even have a story from someone who reached out and wanted to share their story with the Supreme Court about how they experienced discrimination in the housing space. And that led to the shelter space, to them just wanting to sleep on the streets because there’s just no protection in that space that’s meaningful and that’s being enforced,” she added.

According to CCR, the LGBTQ+ community are among marginalized groups that can fall into the “discrimination to incarceration pipeline.”

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“If people are unhoused and policed on the streets, and then criminalized for the status of being homeless, then that puts them into the criminal legal system. And then you have this vicious cycle where you can never escape from,” Hernández said.

Even though there are federal protections against LGBTQ+ discrimination, CCR said “policy failures” and systemic biases remain.

“When you have people being pushed out of educational systems because of unmitigated bullying, when you have jobs and employers openly to this day – even though there’s been clear Supreme Court rulings that LGBTQ+ people are protected by federal civil rights laws restricting employment discrimination – that remains widespread. So, you see all of these factors that are leading to economic precarity within the LGBTQ community. And as a result, you see these staggering rates of homelessness,” Chinyere Ezie, a senior attorney for CCR, furthered.

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CCR said the Supreme Court could make a decision on the case over the summer.

The Supreme Court case comes after a case was brought to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by Grants Pass residents Gloria Johnson and John Logan. The court of appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that the city’s policies violated the Eight Amendment. The judges based their ruling on the 2018 Martin v. City of Boise case, which also cited the Eighth Amendment.

Later in July 2023, the court of appeals upheld their prior decision.

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In January of 2024, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case to reconsider Grants Pass’ camping bans.

In a statement to KOIN 6 News, Theane Evangelis, counsel for the City of Grants Pass, said, “The Ninth Circuit’s decisions in Johnson v. City of Grants Pass and Martin v. Boise have contributed to the growing problem of encampments in cities across the West. More than three dozen briefs on behalf of hundreds of amici, including the United States, 24 States, and 35 cities, agree that the Ninth Circuit’s judgment in this case cannot stand. These decisions are legally wrong and have tied the hands of local governments as they work to address the urgent homelessness crisis.  The tragedy is that these decisions are actually harming the very people they purport to protect.  We look forward to presenting our arguments to the Supreme Court later this month.”

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