Blast From Past: Vagrancy Laws Constitutional

If born before 1960 it boggles the mind that the Supreme Court in 2024 would have to assure us safe streets are constitutional, not the progressives’ “Cruel & Unusual Punishment.” Yet, here we are …

Even before a 6-3 majority of Justices restored some order to traditional local vagrancy laws, the State of Florida felt compelled to add an anti-scammer law that increases owner rights & squatter penalties for trying to claim other peoples’ property as their own. It should never have come to all this, of course. Yet, as the WSJ editorial suggested, it was about time at least “Six Justices reject[ed] the progressive idea that laws against homeless encampments are cruel & unusual punishment.” In doing so, they argued, “The conservatives on the Supreme Court rescued progressive cities on the West Coast [and elsewhere] from themselves … by overruling lower courts that had created a constitutional right to camp on the streets (See City of Grants Pass v Johnson). You’re welcome, San Francisco.”

The repudiation of that progressive constitutional reasoning was savaged by Justice Neil Gorsuch who wrote the majority opinion: The 9th Circuit’s “misrepresentation of Eighth Amendment precedents” has really undermined public safety & made it harder for cities to encourage the homeless to accept shelter. Since that 2018 decision, “progressives have filed lawsuits across western states … to block anti-camping laws” so that “encampments have proliferated.” And, along with it, the additional agony of folks living in squalid conditions at the public’s expense, both in terms of dollars & safety.

Davd Soul