PORTLAND, Ore. — The small Oregon city at the heart of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to enforce homeless camping bans is facing a fresh lawsuit over its camping rules as advocates find new ways to challenge them.
Disability Rights Oregon sued Grants Pass on Thursday, accusing it of violating a state law requiring cities’ camping regulations to be “objectively reasonable.”
The city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last June’s Supreme Court ruling made the southern Oregon mountain town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis. It ushered in a new era of homeless policy by allowing cities from San Francisco to New York to ban sleeping outside and fine people for doing so, even when there aren’t enough shelter beds.
In Grants Pass — where officials have struggled for years to address a homelessness crisis that has divided residents — the decision paved the way for the new mayor and City Council members elected in November to crack down on camping upon taking office.
The high court decision overturned a ruling from a California-based appeals court that found camping bans when shelter space is lacking amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. It enabled Grants Pass to enforce local ordinances barring camping on city property such as parks and sidewalks.
Grants Pass has just one overnight shelter for adults — the Gospel Rescue Mission — and its rules requiring attendance at religious services and barring pets, alcohol, drugs and smoking mean many won’t stay there.
After the ruling was issued, the City Council designated two city-owned properties as the areas where the town’s hundreds of homeless people would be allowed to stay.
But last week, the new council closed the larger of the two campsites — which housed roughly 120 tents, the complaint says — and made the remaining smaller one only open from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., forcing people to pack up their belongings every morning and carry them throughout the day with no place where they can legally set down their things.
“It wants to make being homeless in Grants Pass so unpleasant that people go elsewhere,” Disability Rights Oregon said of the city in its complaint. “Despite the presence of numerous elderly, ill, and disabled people on site, the city increased its draconian restrictions in the dead of winter leaving hundreds of people with no legal option for their continued survival.”
Five homeless people with disabilities who live in Grants Pass are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They include people who use wheelchairs and canes, as well as people suffering from the aftermath of a stroke or missing part of their limbs, according to the complaint.
The complaint says the camping restrictions discriminate against people with disabilities and violate state law, which states that cities’ rules regarding when, where and how homeless people can sleep or keep warm and dry outdoors must be “objectively reasonable.”
“The City has discriminated against people with disabilities by imposing standards for participation in its camping program that require people to move themselves and their own belongings frequently and for no good purpose,” the complaint says. “People with physical disabilities affecting their movement or chronic illnesses that make frequent lifting, carrying, and walking distances difficult or impossible have been and will be cited and prosecuted for violating city ordinances regarding camping.”
Disability Rights Oregon is asking the court to block the city from enforcing its camping rules.
Homelessness continues to be a nationwide crisis. Last year, it increased 18% in a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country.
