Is 9th Circuit’s Vagrant Ruling A Bum Rap?

Some California judges have decided there’s a constitutional right to be a “vagrant” as shown in the latest ruling by 9th Circuit allowing homeless camps on public property. Besides BO, issue now RIPE for Supremes to sanitize it?

The WSJ’s editorial board thinks so, noting that “Progressive policies have turned cities like San Francisco & Portland into havens for homelessness & disorder.” So do 16 of the appellate court’s 52 judges who angrily dissented from an en banc panel & trial judge’s decision to enjoin an Oregon town from enforcing its “anti-camping” laws on public property. Of course, the enjoined City of Grants Pass is “bummed” out since impliedly it now cannot even enforce a public garden’s curfew hour let alone keep a garden-variety addict from pitching a tent on its daisies.

The Ninth Circuit is known nationally for some zany judge-made laws like this. But, the latest ruling may take the cake since it somehow found the city’s anti-camping ordinance to be odious to the “Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel & unusual punishment”; that is, it supposedly stinks for a city to arrest a homeless person or impose any kind of penalty for “sitting, sleeping or lying outside on public property when they don’t have enough shelter beds” for every vagrant within the city limits. There’s no mention by the appellate court as to whether Grants Pass can ticket, let’s say, a tripping homeless addict for urinating or puking on public property that does not provide sufficient port-a-potties. And, they wonder why so many from other states who are unable or unwilling to fend for themselves are flocking to the Golden State?

Davd Soul