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Page Number: 13

8 

CITY OF GRANTS PASS v. JOHNSON 

Opinion of the Court 

its camping laws against the plaintiffs.  Ibid. 

No other circuit has followed Martin’s lead with respect
to  public-camping  laws.  Nor  did  the  decision  go  unre-
marked within the Ninth Circuit.  When the full court de-
nied rehearing en banc, several judges wrote separately to 
note their dissent.  In one statement, Judge Bennett argued 
that Martin was inconsistent with the Cruel and Unusual 
Punishments Clause.  That provision, Judge Bennett con-
tended, prohibits certain methods of punishment a govern-
ment may impose after a criminal conviction, but it does not 
“impose  [any]  substantive  limits  on  what  conduct  a  state 
may criminalize.”  920 F. 3d, at 599–602.  In another state-
ment, Judge Smith lamented that Martin had “shackle[d] 
the hands of public officials trying to redress the serious so-
cietal concern of homelessness.”  Id., at 590.  He predicted 
the  decision  would  “wrea[k]  havoc  on  local  governments,
residents, and businesses” across the American West.  Ibid.
  After Martin, similar suits proliferated against Western 
cities within the Ninth Circuit.  As Judge Smith put it, “[i]f 
one picks up a map of the western United States and points 
to a city that appears on it, there is a good chance that city
has already faced” a judicial injunction based on Martin or 
the threat  of one “in the few short years since [the Ninth
Circuit] initiated its Martin experiment.”  72 F. 4th, at 940; 
see, e.g., Boyd v. San Rafael, 2023 WL 7283885, *1–*2 (ND 
Cal., Nov. 2, 2023); Fund for Empowerment v. Phoenix, 646 
F. Supp. 3d 1117, 1132 (Ariz. 2022); Warren v. Chico, 2021 
WL 2894648, *3 (ED Cal., July 8, 2021). 

Consider  San  Francisco,  where  each  night  thousands
sleep “in tents and other makeshift structures.”  Brief for 
City and County of San Francisco et al. as Amici Curiae 8 
(San Francisco Brief ).  Applying Martin, a district court en-
tered  an  injunction  barring  the  city  from  enforcing  “laws 
and ordinances to prohibit involuntarily homeless individ-
uals from sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property.”  Co-
alition on Homelessness v. San Francisco, 647 F. Supp. 3d