Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

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

13 

Opinion of the Court 

without  shelter  in  Grants  Pass  was  “involuntarily  home-
less” because the city’s total homeless population outnum-
bered its “ ‘practically available’ ” shelter beds.  App. to Pet.
for Cert. 179a, 216a.  In fact, the court ruled, none of the 
beds  at  Grants  Pass’s  charity-run  shelter  qualified  as 
“available.”  They did not, the court said, both because that
shelter offers something closer to transitional housing than 
“temporary  emergency  shelter,”  and  because  the  shelter
has rules requiring residents to abstain from smoking and
attend  religious  services.    Id.,  at  179a–180a.    The  Eighth
Amendment,  the  district  court  thus  concluded,  prohibited 
Grants Pass from enforcing its laws against homeless indi-
viduals in the city.  Id., at 182a–183a. 

A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed in relevant 
part.  72 F. 4th, at 874–896.  The majority agreed with the 
district  court  that  all  unsheltered  individuals  in  Grants 
Pass qualify as “involuntarily homeless” because the city’s 
homeless population exceeds “available” shelter beds.  Id., 
at 894.  And the majority further agreed that, under Mar-
tin,  the  homeless  there  cannot  be  punished  for  camping 
with “rudimentary forms of protection from the elements.” 
72 F. 4th, at 896.  In dissent, Judge Collins questioned Mar-
tin’s  consistency  with  the  Eighth  Amendment  and  la-
mented  its  “dire  practical  consequences”  for  the  city  and
others like it.  72 F. 4th, at 914 (internal quotation marks 
omitted).

The  city  sought  rehearing  en  banc,  which  the  court  de-
nied over the objection of 17 judges who joined five separate
opinions.  Id., at 869, 924–945.  Judge O’Scannlain, joined 
by  14  judges,  criticized  Martin’s  “jurisprudential  experi-
ment” as “egregiously flawed and deeply damaging—at war 
with  the  constitutional  text,  history,  and  tradition.”    72 
F. 4th, at 925, 926, n. 2.  Judge Bress, joined by 11 judges, 
contended that Martin has “add[ed] enormous and unjusti-
fied complication to an  already extremely complicated set
of  circumstances.”  72  F. 4th,  at  945.    And  Judge  Smith,