The small Oregon city at the heart of a major US supreme court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to fine and jail unhoused people sleeping outside is facing a fresh lawsuit over its anti-camping rules.
Disability Rights Oregon sued Grants Pass on Thursday, accusing it of violating a state law requiring cities’ camping regulations to be “objectively reasonable”.
The suit alleges that the city’s shelter offerings for unhoused people are so limited and inaccessible, particularly to people with disabilities, that many have “no legal option for their continued survival”.
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 criminalization by allowing cities to ban sleeping outside and fine people for doing so, even when there are not 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 councilmembers elected in November to escalate a crackdown 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 US 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 will not 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 5pm to 7am, 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 unhoused people with disabilities who live in Grants Pass are named as plaintiffs. 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.
More than a hundred jurisdictions across the country passed laws banning unhoused people from camping outside after the supreme court ruling last year, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Many of the criminalization efforts have been adopted in California, home to a quarter of unsheltered people in the US, but the crackdowns have taken place in a wide range of regions under Republican and Democratic leaders.
Advocates for the unhoused have argued that the law enforcement response to the crisis only exacerbates people’s struggles with debts and jail time without getting them closer to housing. Proponents of anti-camping laws argue they are necessary to clear public areas of encampments and can be used to force people into shelter.
