- cross-posted to:
- housing_bubble_2@lemmy.world
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I thought washington had good support homeless. What gives?
Lots of places swung hard the other way after the pandemic. That said there’s literally no easy this is constitutional and it’s already been ruled on. Some civil rights place will take it on for an easy slam dunk.
I don’t think the Constitution permits sleeping in any public space, but the ACLU is challenging on Eighth Amendment grounds in Grants Pass v. Johnson. So we’ll know soon enough if it’s Constitutional.
It doesn’t specifically ensure a right to sleep no but to enjoy public places is legal, I can camp on public grounds so long as it’s not gated or otherwise excluded or currently utilized. They can say don’t sleep on public benches because it prevents enjoyment from others and isn’t what they’re there for but if you pitch a tent in the woods that’s legal no matter what local governments say.
I don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution about enjoying public spaces either. If you’re allowed to camp on state land in your state it’s because your state law permits it.
If I have the right to protest on public spaces because I have a measurable property right to it then I have the same right of enjoyment for any other protected right included simply existing and the necessities thereof.
Someone already tried that in 1984. When homeless activists camped out on Lafayette Square in front of the White House, the Supreme Court ruled in Clark v. Community for Creative Nonviolence that the act of sleeping itself was “facilitative,” rather than “expressive,” meaning that campgrounds aren’t protected forms of speech at all.
No it was tried as a 1st amendment issue. It needs to be tried as a 4th amendment issue which it actually it.
Ie. Camping isn’t protected under the first amendment act as it isn’t expressive initself which that ruling if you read it makes clear. Essentially by itself it isn’t but it could theoretically be made expressive but that hasn’t be tried.