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CITY OF GRANTS PASS v. JOHNSON 

Syllabus 

to  Pet.  for  Cert.  179a,  216a.    The  beds  at  Grants  Pass’s  charity-run
shelter did not qualify as “available” in part because that shelter has 
rules requiring residents to abstain from smoking and to attend reli-
gious services.  App. to Pet. for Cert. 179a–180a.  A divided panel of 
the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s Martin injunction in rel-
evant part.  72 F. 4th 868, 874–896.  Grants Pass filed a petition for 
certiorari.  Many States, cities, and counties from across the Ninth Cir-
cuit urged the Court to grant review to assess Martin. 

Held: The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping 
on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” 
prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.  Pp. 15–35. 

(a) The  Eighth  Amendment’s  Cruel  and  Unusual  Punishments 
Clause “has always been considered, and properly so, to be directed at 
the  method  or  kind  of  punishment”  a  government  may  “impos[e]  for
the violation of criminal statutes.”  Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514, 531– 
532 (plurality opinion).  It was adopted to ensure that the new Nation
would never resort to certain “formerly tolerated” punishments consid-
ered  “cruel”  because  they  were  calculated  to  “ ‘superad[d]’ ”    “ ‘terror, 
pain, or disgrace,’ ” and considered “unusual” because, by the time of
the Amendment’s adoption, they had “long fallen out of use.”  Bucklew 
v. Precythe, 587 U. S 119, 130.  All that would seem to make the Eighth
Amendment a poor foundation on which to rest the kind of decree the 
plaintiffs seek in this case and the Ninth Circuit has endorsed since 
Martin.  The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause focuses on the 
question what “method or kind of punishment” a government may im-
pose after a criminal conviction, not on the question whether a govern-
ment may criminalize particular behavior in the first place.  Powell, 
392 U. S., at 531–532.   

The  Court  cannot  say  that  the  punishments  Grants  Pass  imposes
here qualify as cruel and unusual.  The city imposes only limited fines 
for  first-time  offenders,  an  order  temporarily  barring  an  individual 
from camping in a public park for repeat offenders, and a maximum
sentence  of  30  days  in  jail  for  those  who  later  violate  an  order.    See 
Ore. Rev. Stat. §§164.245, 161.615(3).  Such punishments do not qual-
ify as cruel because they are not designed to “superad[d]” “terror, pain, 
or  disgrace.”  Bucklew,  587  U.  S.,  at  130  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted).  Nor are they unusual, because similarly limited fines and 
jail terms have been and remain among “the usual mode[s]” for pun-
ishing criminal offenses throughout the country.  Pervear v. Common-
wealth, 5 Wall. 475, 480.  Indeed, cities and States across the country
have long employed similar punishments for similar offenses.  Pp. 15–
17. 

(b) Plaintiffs do not meaningfully dispute that, on its face, the Cruel 
and  Unusual  Punishments  Clause  does  not  speak  to  questions  like