SCOTUS denies cert. in homeless case. May benefit transient persons required to register as sex offenders.

The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to consider a 9th Circuit Court decision that, which upheld a decision that  homeless people have a constitutional right to sleep on public property outdoors if no other shelter is available to them.

The case is Boise v. Martin, and the ruling of the appellate court was that the city may not criminalize homelessness if the city cannot afford the homeless any other opportunity for shelter. To do so would be violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments by enforcing criminal penalties under its anti-camping ordinance.

A couple of years ago, the county of Miami-Dade enacted an amendment to an ordinance which we referred to as the “Bovo Amendment” (after the commissioner who sponsored it). The amendment effectively carved out an exception to the County’s overnight camping ordinance for persons required to register as sex offenders. The county could not arrest a homeless person without first offering them access to a homeless shelter unless they are a registrant. The county passed the amendment because there are no homeless shelters in Miami-Dade that will accept someone on the registry.

It effectively allowed transient registrants to be arrested on sight and gave the County the power to break up the encampments of transient registrants under the threat of arrest (as they have now done TWICE since the enactment of the ordinance).

This SCOTUS decision to not hear the case effectively endorses the lower court’s decision. We await word from the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Miami-Dade SORR challenge to learn whether this will benefit the case. Clearly it is a strong persuasive argument against the Bovo Amendment.