'Sleep is a biological necessity': Sotomayor rips ruling to crack down on unhoused people

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow an Oregon city to target homeless people for sleeping on public property.

The ruling handed down Friday overturns a 2022 decision by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with the court's conservatives finding that the measures enacted by Grants Pass city officials do not violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment, reported NBC News.

The ordinances prohibit sleeping or camping on publicly owned property and impose fines of up to several hundred dollars and exclusion orders banning individuals from public property.

The appeals court had ruled 2-1 that the city cannot “enforce its anti-camping ordinances against homeless persons for the mere act of sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in their car at night, when there is no other place in the city for them to go.”

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That ruling had applied to all nine states in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction, some of which have large populations of homeless people, including California.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read from her dissent from the bench, saying "sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime."

"For some people, sleeping outside is their only option," Sotomayor said. "The City of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional."