Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
Page Number: 65

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

21 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

of these tools remain available to localities seeking to ad-
dress homelessness within constitutional bounds. 

B 
The scope of this dispute is narrow.  Respondents do not
challenge the City’s “restrictions on the use of tents or other 
camping gear,” “encampment clearances,” “time and place
restrictions on sleeping outside,” or “the imposition of fines
or jail time on homeless people who decline accessible shel-
ter options.”  Brief for Respondents 18.

That means the majority does not need to answer most of 
the hypotheticals it poses.  The City’s hypotheticals, echoed
throughout  the  majority  opinion,  concern  “violent  crime, 
drug overdoses, disease, fires, and hazardous waste.”  Brief 
for Petitioner 47.  For the most part, these concerns are not 
implicated in this case.  The District Court’s injunction, for
example, permits the City to prohibit “littering, public uri-
nation or defecation, obstruction of roadways, possession or
distribution of illicit substances, harassment, or violence.” 
App. to Pet. for Cert. 200a.  The majority’s framing of the
problem as one involving drugs, diseases, and fires instead 
of one involving people trying to keep warm outside with a 
blanket  just  provides  the  Court  with  cover  to  permit  the
criminalization of homeless people. 

The  majority  also  overstates  the  line-drawing  problems 
that  a  baseline  Eighth  Amendment  standard  presents.
Consider  the  “unavoidable”  “difficult  questions”  that  dis-
combobulate the majority.  Ante, at 32–33.  Courts answer 
such factual questions every day.  For example, the major-
ity asks: “What does it mean to be ‘involuntarily’ homeless
with ‘no place to go’?”  Ibid.  Martin’s answer was clear: It 
is when “ ‘there is a greater number of homeless individuals
in [a city] than the number of available beds [in shelters,]’ ” 
not including “individuals who do have access to adequate
temporary  shelter,  whether  because  they  have  the  means 
to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them