The 9th circuit court of appeals affirmed the constitutional right of vagrants to sleep on sidewalks, in parks, and even on the steps of court houses. 
Please consider the Coalition on Homeless v. the City of San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department filed January 11. 2024.
In the ruling, the court sided with the Coalition on Homeless and against the city to “prevent the City and County of San Francisco from enforcing any ordinance that punishes sleeping, lodging, or camping on public property“.
The ruling was based on an extreme interpretation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution.
Eighth Amendment
The 8th amendment says “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
In a 53-page ruling, the Appeals Court ruled that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to prevent camping on sidewalks or any public property, presumably even courthouse steps.
The last 36 pages of the ruling (first link) was a blistering dissent by circuit judge Patrick J. Bumatay. Here are some pertinent snips.
Today, we let stand an injunction permitting homeless persons to sleep anywhere, anytime in public in the City of San Francisco unless adequate shelter is provided. The district court’s sweeping injunction represents yet another expansion of our court’s cruel and unusual Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Our decision is cruel because it leaves the citizens of San Francisco powerless to enforce their own health and safety laws without the permission of a federal judge. And it’s unusual because no other court in the country has interpreted the Constitution in this way.
Based on a misreading of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the district court now dictates to San Francisco how it may manage its sidewalks, streets, and parks. The result of the district court’s far reaching injunction is that homeless persons now have a choice to sleep, lie, or sit anywhere they want in public at any time until San Francisco can provide them shelter. That ruling is far removed from the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and disregards the long history of anti-vagrancy laws in this country. And the district court goes beyond even our circuit’s extraordinary reading of the Clause.
The Coalition on Homelessness sued San Francisco seeking to enjoin enforcement of State and local laws barring sleeping on sidewalks at certain times, public lodging and camping, and obstructing streets and parks. See Cal. Penal Code §§ 148(a), 370, 372, 647(e); S.F. Police Code §§ 168, 169. Based on an underdeveloped factual record, and apparently without even considering how these individual laws fit within our Martin/Grants Pass framework, the district court agreed to enjoin enforcement of the laws against “involuntarily homeless individuals.” Worse yet, the district court didn’t even define what it means to be “involuntarily homeless” and gave conflicting signals on the point—an issue we address in our concurrently filed memorandum disposition. To top it off, the district court then set a novel end date for the injunction. It continues “as long as there are more homeless individuals in San Francisco than there are shelter beds available.” Never mind that injunctions usually terminate at the end of litigation, or that the relief here is merely meant to be preliminary. This sweeping injunction has no basis in the Constitution or our precedent. San Francisco should not be treated as an experiment for judicial tinkering.
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear the Case
Do to the overwhelming and unprecedented stupidity of the 9th Circuit ruling, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from local governments in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.
The Wall Street Journal noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom argued in a friend-of-court brief that “courts are not well-suited to micromanage such nuanced policy issues based on ill-defined rules.”
The Journal’s comment is quite the hoot: “We look forward to Mr. Newsom’s constitutional communion with Justice Clarence Thomas.“
The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It
On January 10, I commented The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It
Wealth Tax Details
- The bill would impose an annual excise tax of 1.5% on the worldwide net worth of every full- and part-year California resident that exceeds $1 billion, starting this tax year.
- Come Jan. 1, 2026, the state would tax wealth that exceeds $50 million at a rate of 1% each year, with an additional 0.5% tax on assets valued at more than $1 billion.
- Part-time residents would be taxed on a pro rata share of their wealth based on the number of days they spend annually in California.
- The tax would also apply to nonresidents who have recently left the state.
- Democrats exempted real property from the tax as a favor to their high-end real-estate industry and Hollywood donors.
- To spread the wealth around to plaintiff-bar donors, the bill would apply the state’s False Claims Act to wealth-tax records and statements. This means plaintiff attorneys could sue affluent individuals on behalf of the state for allegedly under-reporting assets. Plaintiff attorneys would be entitled to a share of the state’s recovery.
If the wealth tax passes, I look forwards to another mind meld of a different nature with the US Supreme Court.
If some out there has a solution to mental illness, then I will have a solution for homelessness.
Good idea! We’ll use the solution to mental illness on our Judges and Legislators first, and then everything else will fall into line!
Ask the vagrants to pile into the court steps and court room. Space near the judge should also be occupied by vagrants. If possible they should sit on the judge’s head. Why not occupy the judge’s home driveway too. Pile on vagrants it is all yours for the taking. Go for it
The end of civil society.
The trend is lawfare and new and perverse ways of twisting the meanings and intention of old words and laws, the more shamelessly disingenuous, the greater the celebration.
It is not enough to humiliate the population, they need to have it rubbed in.
Do you have any solutions, or just complaints about the problems and attempts at solutions? Would you support eliminating people who cannot support themselves? By eliminate, I think you understand what I’m suggesting.
I have a solution….they should camp in your front lawn/door.
The problem is not because of people who cannot support themselves. The problem is because of people who CHOOSE NOT to support themselves, or who have VOLUNTARILY destroyed their ability to support themselves.
It seems to me that they have, of their own free will, decided to eliminate themselves. Who are YOU to prevent them? Even more to the point, how ethical is it for you to take other people’s property at gunpoint (taxes) and use it to support them?
It would fall of its own weight. As with every other tax, the wealth tax will soon be riddled with exceptions and loopholes pushed forward by lawyers and accountants of the wealthy. We can see the first loophole already: real estate is exempt from the proposed California wealth tax. On that basis alone one would expect schemes to arise in which huge investments in real estate are funded by loans secured by the other sources of wealth (so that on net the taxable wealth would be below the thresholds in the law).
It would also run into trouble with the Feds when the state begins to assess tax against the value of Federal cash, notes and bonds held by the wealthy. Right now the income from all Federal debt is untaxable by the states, and it wouldn’t be long before Federal securities and cash would be made off limits to any state’ s wealth tax – that’s trillions of dollars. I would also think that the municipal and state debt of California held by the wealthy would be made off limits to taxation.
Soon may be all Somalia wiill be sleeping in San Francisco. Open borders, good climate, free camping… and free lawyers (Who are that Coalition on Homeless?, Have they offices? Where they discuss and print their plaintiffs?)
That is an interesting ruling. There is a longstanding rule in the National Forests that you can only camp in the same place for two weeks. That rule is obviously in conflict with tha Court’s decision.
Is it?
Technically they just have to move about 10 ft along the sidewalk to be in a different place. Same with national forests, you just have to move to a different camp site, not a different national forest.
Yes, but the National Forests charge you rent for that camp site. Start charging the homeless people rent for the space they take up. Sort of like parking meters. Or does this ruling cover parking meters, now, since essentially you’re just camping your car in a spot?
San Francisco needs to join my local HOA. They have rules and they enforce them.
At our next HOA meeting I plan to forward the idea that we become a Gated Community at once. That would also protect us from “Tour Busses” from Texas.
So, if you can’t afford rent or a mortgage, you are stuck sleeping outside somewhere. Which means either private or public property. Private owners can kick you off their property as they see fit. But we all own public property. So what else can you do? As an American citizen, the police don’t have the right to just kidnap you and put you somewhere because they don’t like you. They’re citizens too and have all the liberty of other citizens.
+1
What it fundamentally comes down to, is that government has the right to REGULATE behavior, but not to PROHIBIT it.
Somewhere to sleep, is a basic, God given right. Legitimate government can still bar you from sleeping right in the middle of a busy freeway. As long as, and ONLY AS LONG AS, fairly equivalent alternatives are still available.
The canonical example being driving: Government can legitimately bar you from driving on the left side of the road, AS LONG AS it provides a fairly equivalent right side of the road for you to drive on. Whereas, if it attempts to bar you from driving on either side of the road, it’s violating your God given right to drive wherever on God’s creation you see fit. Hence, you perfectly legitimately can respond by driving wherever you darned well feel like.
Only as long as effectively equivalent alternative(s) is provided, is it acceptable to bar free people from exercising their God given right to do as they please: Regulation, not Prohibition. The legitimate objective being ever only to REGULATE behavior; in order to coordinate it to make things flow smoother in a society of many. Never to PROHIBIT behavior outright.
The homeless population falls into these categories: alcoholics and substance abusers with families who wont tolerate their addictions. Mentally ill who should be in mental institutions. Those who want to work but can’t afford rent. Those who cannot cope in a competitive world. Solution: the state or local govt buy run down motels and have homeless work and run facility under strict supervision. Also Camps for Tramps where those who want to work can learn skills and do useful work in state and local parks. The days of free and easy wandering are coming to a close.
Sidewalk rental fees and taxes next.
A homeless person has no home. Where are they meant to go if there is no sheltered accomodation for them? It’s all well and good bashing the homeless, but we’re all one bad decision away from losing our homes and incomes. USA is meant to be the wealthiest nation on earth. That it can’t provid basic accomodation to it’s most vulnerable says a lot.
This is easy to solve: well-meaning people like you can come together and contribute the funds needed
I already do, via a high tax bill. Maybe if Gov didn’t waste money on needless wars, dangerous vaccines, stupid lockdowns and corruption, they’d have enough to spend on where it’s actually needed?
I agree about the needless wars, etc., so how about we end those things, lower the taxes and then charitable people can VOLUNTARILY give their excess money to any charity or whomever they feel it should go.
As long as the money comes from taxes, it is money seized at gunpoint from everyone who disagrees with which charities should be supported.
And or let them live in your house.
Classic anti-intellectual canard right there
You can’t handle a more intelligent , can you? One bad decision away from losing your home my left eye
Let the homeless stay in your spare rooms, your couch, your porch and your yard. Also let them use your toilet and bath. Or are you lacking compassion?
We all despise them. And since none of us are going to do a damn thing about them, they’re going to sleep and poop in our streets. Anything else would require government funding which we all despise even more. God bless!
In California’s Siskiyou County where I live, the homeless receive food stamps, free medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare, cell phones, have a port-a-potty, a garbage bin, and enjoy food from local nonprofits regularly. The receive far more from our community than they will ever contribute. Moreover, they are allowed to live in tents on a hillside across from our Behavioral Health Department. Honestly, for many of them, their own lifestyle choices have placed them there. Not one bad decision; many of them. Your concern can be phrased another way: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Sounds appealing. Yet, this is the siren song of Marxism, where needs grow with desires, rights with sentimentality, and a society like ours buckles – as all societies have – under the weight of promises too vast to keep.
Should we just eliminate them then?
As they can, here or elsewhere, let them mind life’s taper to the end. Ours are cared for in Siskiyou County. In this they are fortunate. Your question, so black and white, belies an innocence. You see a snapshot from a distance and grieve. Growing up in the Bay Area, I’ve lived in rural Northern California for 22 years now. I’ve divided my time between Trinity and Siskiyou Counties, two of the three poorest counties in California. I’ve lived and worked among the poor. I still do. Although they have opportunities, they have the misfortune of free internet, free phones, free food (we call them commodities), free legal help, free medical, dental, and behavioral health care. Given so much, they have little need for honest work. While poor, they are not destitute. For them, the fruit lies low in abundance. With each passing season, I’ve come to know them more intimately than you might imagine. I pity their abundance, which has made them poor – and will keep them so.
Move them to your house and let you pay for them since you love these losers so much.
So, where are homeless people supposed to sleep? The WSJ says that homeless people don’t want to sleep in shelters because they want to use drugs, but the ruling specifically allows for homeless people to sleep on the streets only if the city is unable to provide them an accommodation.
The 9th circuit would have had to rule this way to be consistent in spirit with Martin v City of Boise which the Court let stand.
The Wall Street Journal piece on the California wealth tax looks like a misread of the legislative scene in the state. It seems there was one legislator interested in it at this time and that is about it. But I would not be surprised to see a fire or teachers union come out with it as a constitutional amendment petition to advance their priorities.
The Wall Street Journal noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom argued in a friend-of-court brief that “courts are not well-suited to micromanage such nuanced policy issues based on ill-defined rules.”
Ill-defined rules
The state is now micromanaging local zoning laws, to force cities to stuff more people within city limits and cause a decline in the standard of living in them.
Cities are BUILT to have MORE people in them…it’s NOT the countryside or some suburbs. San Francisco and other places like it have created overly expensive rents and costs of living because they haven’t allowed enough development for the population and employee requirements to effectively run (and pay for) the city.
+1
As always: Lack of freedom and free markets fail.
Considering the disposal cost of housing, it is virtually impossible to fathom a free housing market not quickly accumulating enough “unwanted” space to render the least attractive units virtually free. Every manufacturing industry after-the-fact “overproduces.” In most industries, stuff hence ends up thrown away. Or shipped abroad to be sold for cheap in third world countries. The sheer cost of shipping a San Francisco tower to Africa, would almost inevitably render some of them simply left abandoned instead.
The ONLY reason you don’t see this happening in housing, is totalitarian government banning people from freely building what they feel the market will bear at any given time. In fact, back when Americans were free, they did build towns, even cities. And then abandoned them as ghost towns, once better opportunities presented themselves elsewhere.
Only once America changed from being free, to being just another totalitarian hellhole, did this inevitable-in-all-free-societies practice come to an end. To be replaced by 5-year-planner-deemed-and-decided grotesque underprovisioning. For no other reason than to transfer-by-force wealth: To incompetent idiots too incompetent to competitively build anything, by way of banning their in-all-ways-but-connectedness-to-totalitarian-government betters, from freely competing, and hence invariably outperforming, the incompetents.
I think you are missing the point. Zoning is a local, not state matter. The legislators in Sacramento do not live in the community. I remember reading that a federal legislator for South Central Los Angeles does not live there, but in a higher quality neighborhood. How many ADU’s are going to be built in the back yard of the rich in Beverly Hills, to provide additional housing? How many mansions will be torn down to put up large apartment buildings among them. My guess would be zero.
Courts very well can’t rule that it’s illegal to exist. If they can’t camp somewhere where do they go? As a Californian watching the local politicians vote down every privately funded low income housing project while making our cities sanctuary cities for the illegals and giving illegals medi-cal I say sleep in the bed you made. The sad thing is most states including red states are doing the same stuff that led to the mess in Cali on the housing side. The sentiment amoung the liberal homeowners is such they are damn near ready to put homeless people in gas chambers…sad days indeed, what has America come to?
Homeowners want high property values. The homeless are a fly in the ointment. Feudalism was better than capitalism in that serfs couldn’t be evicted from the land. They had hereditary rights to occupy the space.
Your kidding me right? If the serfs didn’t pay their produce tithe they were ousted in a minute.
They weren’t ousted, they were killed. Useless eaters weren’t permitted then because society couldn’t afford it.
It doesn’t say sidewalks can be used a as toilet, so “tent tenants” must walk some distance to be fully compliant with the letter of the ruling. I knew, there was a loophole in the loophole.
I think the homeless have a right to camp on the sidewalks in front of the appeals court Judge’s house.
I’m sure they would, if you paid them to do so. Then they would have a place to sleep, and your lust for petty revenge would be fulfilled
I’m selling the house and staking out a nice piece of land in the park. Thanks 9th circuit!
Nah, you’re not hardy enough to give up the cushy life. But nice thought.
Re. the subject of the headline, that the homeless have a right… That the homeless have a <b>positive</b> right to this, and another this, etc. That is just like liberals, who believe that society owes people many positive rights. (And if you are a well off person in that society, then you are under obligation to fund all those things that society must provide…)
Re. California’s wealth tax: 1) It leaves some hope that if your departure from California is “not so recent” that you are off the hook of paying it. 2) Expect CA to enact or interpret that if your wealth has residence in CA, then at least that share of your wealth is subject to wealth taxation. For example, Sergei Brin owns a big piece of Google. Google has facilities in California. By the logic that could come out of (2) Sergei Brin would owe wealth tax even if he never sets foot in CA again.
Bears repeating that economist Thomas Piketty and Sen. Bernie Sanders intend that billionaires not exist. Taxing wealth causes the value of wealth to be diminished. “Ideally”, in the end what is left of that wealth is more widely distributed, without anyone having “too much”. Less ideally, the wealthy move their wealth to some place that doesn’t tax it. Wealth taxes are ultimately self-extinguishing, with what they tax disappearing.
But don’t forget that the US taxes wealth/income no matter where it exists in the world, IF you are a US citizen.
Seems a ludicrous decision.
…… unless it’s in front of the judges or oligarch politicians homes and neighborhoods. Then that shit is illegal and dangerous and “we need to do something about this outrageous and untenable situation.”
The elite HATE YOU. Rules for thee but not for me. 😂🤣😂🤣
Once again, high level judges show little to no understanding of the US Constitution. The condition of homelessness is not entered as a result of court directed punishment for any crime. Laws themselves are not punishment. The 8th amendment, therefore, has not been violated. The best place for homeless to live is in front of the home of any judge in the majority opinion so a utopia may be celebrated.
I don’t know about the other states in the 9th district but it looks like the administration of California opposes this ruling.
Probably because they are worried about my idea above where some homeless people might camp out in the lobbies of public buildings and couldn’t be removed when the building closes for the evening.
Stoopid judges…
The state of California and the cities within opposed this dumb ruling so they will ensure their police departments will do squat when homeless start camping in front of the moron judges homes or in the judges parking spot at the courthouse. First time one of those judges steps on a dirty needle or a pile of poop outside their home or in the courthouse parking lot they will reverse their ruling.
Or to meet the judges mandated requirements of providing housing the city could build a tent city all along each judges street and put the portaloos next to the judges driveways.
I look forward in the comments by those California apologists, all of whom have left the state, to defend this idiocy.
What is preventing homeless from setting up camp INSIDE public buildings? It’s a lot warmer in there than out on the steps of said buildings.
Bravo! Great idea! You might have just birthed a trend. I’m sure that the 9th Circus Court (per Rush Limbaugh) would confirm that “right.”
Already happening in New York City. They are housing illegals in the schools there.
Nonsense. Learn what “Illegals” mean. They are housing people seeking asylum in NYC. NOT Illegals…but that doesn’t fit YOUR narrative, now does it.
The asylum seeking is just a standard legal ploy to ensure that when detained at the border that they are released with an asylum claim, it takes years to get an asylum hearing to determine if they are genuine. Few are and so most don’t go to the hearing.
They are illegal alien criminal vermin. . Like every mealy mouth slime liar throughout history you trust words and hide the truth. Naturally AOC refuses to comment because they are not in her district.
Public Schools seem to be doing the trick in NYC…
The Coalition on Homeless wants to keep making their money. Homeless Industrial Complex. There is money to be made from the drug addicts and mentally ill by keeping them living in squalor on the streets.
Both DOA at SCOTUS. Trump’s perhaps only valuable act was his SCOTUS appointments. I think a lot of MAGAs expect them to save him if convicted in any of his upcoming criminal trials. I only think he can really count on Thomas.
San Francisco is a self-inflicted collapse caused by failed marxist policies and a disregard for individual rights. From free needles for drug addicts, to endless giveaways for illegals, to gang violence, this city is just a hair away from being a total “No-Go” zone.
SF is the doom loop poster child.
“San Francisco is a self-inflicted collapse caused by failed marxist policies and a disregard for individual rights.”
America is. Nothing particular about San Francisco. That’s just one totalitarian dump, out of thousands. The rot is fully universal.
Dumocrats are really hurting this country. Are they doing it on purpose? Allowing homeless to sleep anywhere! Think of the crime. As to taxing their hardest working who have accumulated wealth, it is like asking them to move to another state and pay taxes there. Federally, Trump was able to recapture hundreds of millions in taxes from corporate inversions and candidates who Clinton and Obama forced to leave the USA. Now Dumocrats are reversing that law to penalize the smaller businesses and the ones who can afford it will once again relocate to pay competitive tax rates. Idiocracy. In the 60’s, the lazy and homeless were put in the military and trained. Today, they are not trying to find the answer, only laing back and let them commit crimes on our families. Dumocrats!
9th Circuit. To be expected with that court.
Absolute lunacy.
It is hard not to see something a little silly here. After these extreme progressives play SJWs 24×7 … and accuse the sane part of the country of being heartless about the homeless … it’s ironic that they really want to kick them to the curb. Sort of like how long they claimed that they were champions of the immigrants and the rest of us where heartless. They were champions of the immigrants coming in and staying in the border towns. As soon as they came to them … suddenly the tune changes. If I thought that they were truly learning that their policies breed disaster … I’d be less pessimistic about the situation.