The 2018 Ninth Circuit decision in Martin v. City of Boise held that the Eighth Amendment bars cities from criminally punishing homeless individuals for sleeping in public when no shelter bed is available to them.1United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Martin v. City of Boise – 902 F.3d 1031 It governed nine Western states for nearly six years. It is no longer good law. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned it in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, ruling that generally applicable camping bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment.2Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175
What the Ninth Circuit Held
Boise enforced two ordinances against people living outside. One banned camping in public places. The other treated sleeping or lodging in any public or private location without permission as disorderly conduct.3Justia. Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845 (9th Cir. 2018) Together they made the act of sleeping a criminal offense for anyone without a roof.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that so long as a person has no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot prosecute them for sleeping outdoors on public property. Criminal penalties for sitting, lying, or sleeping in public are cruel and unusual when no shelter is available to the individual being cited.3Justia. Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845 (9th Cir. 2018)
The court described the holding as narrow. It did not require cities to build shelters or fund housing. It did not stop cities from banning tents, clearing obstructed sidewalks, or regulating the time and manner of public conduct. What it blocked was one thing: using the criminal system to punish unavoidable survival behavior when the person had no indoor alternative.1United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Martin v. City of Boise – 902 F.3d 1031
The Legal Reasoning Behind the Ruling
The decision built on Robinson v. California, a 1962 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a state law criminalizing narcotic addiction. Under Robinson, the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishing a person for a status or condition rather than for an act. A state can criminalize possessing drugs. It cannot criminalize being addicted.
The Ninth Circuit extended that principle. If homelessness is an involuntary condition for people with nowhere else to go, then punishing them for sleeping outside is punishing the status of being homeless. Sleeping is not a choice when every shelter bed is taken, so ordinances that appear to regulate conduct are, in practice, regulating status.
What Cities Had to Do Under Martin
Enforcement required a threshold check. Before citing someone under a camping or public-sleeping ordinance, a city had to confirm that an accessible, suitable shelter bed was actually available to that specific person. A full shelter did not count. Neither did a shelter the individual was ineligible to use.1United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Martin v. City of Boise – 902 F.3d 1031
Suitability turned on the person’s circumstances. A shelter that separated families could be unsuitable for a parent with children. A shelter requiring participation in religious programming was not a real option for someone who did not share that faith. A shelter without wheelchair access was not available to someone with a mobility disability. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, government-funded shelter programs must provide equal access to people with disabilities, including physically accessible sleeping areas, bathrooms, and entrances.4U.S. Department of Justice. ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments – Chapter 7 Addendum 2
Officers effectively had to verify not just that a bed existed somewhere in town, but that the particular person in front of them could actually use it. In cities with chronic shelter shortages, that requirement often meant camping bans could not be enforced at all. In cities with more capacity, individual eligibility still had to be assessed case by case.
Where and How Long Martin Applied
Martin was binding precedent across the Ninth Circuit, which covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, along with Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.5United States Courts for the Ninth Circuit. About the Ninth Circuit Boise sought Supreme Court review, and on December 16, 2019, the Court denied the petition without comment.3Justia. Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845 (9th Cir. 2018) The ruling remained the law of the circuit and carried persuasive weight in courts elsewhere until the summer of 2024.
How Grants Pass v. Johnson Overturned Martin
The constitutional question Boise had tried to raise reached the Supreme Court through a different case. Grants Pass, Oregon, had its own camping ban struck down by the Ninth Circuit under the Martin framework, and this time the Court agreed to hear it.
On June 28, 2024, in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Gorsuch, the Court held that enforcing generally applicable camping laws is not cruel and unusual punishment.2Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175 The ruling directly reversed the Ninth Circuit and dismantled the Martin framework.
The majority’s reasoning had two parts. First, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment concerns the method or kind of punishment imposed after conviction, not whether the government may criminalize particular behavior at all. The fines and short jail terms Grants Pass imposed were neither cruel nor unusual by historical standards.6Justia. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
Second, the Court held that camping bans target actions, not the status of being homeless. The laws apply equally to a backpacker, a college student protesting on a lawn, or a person without housing. Because the ordinances do not single out homeless individuals by status, Robinson did not apply. The Court left Robinson itself in place but rejected the Ninth Circuit’s expansion of it to cover acts that are “in some sense involuntary.”2Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175
Justice Gorsuch also wrote that federal judges are not well-positioned to manage homelessness policy, and that questions like what counts as “involuntary” homelessness or when a shelter is “practically available” do not have answers in the text of the Eighth Amendment.2Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175
The Dissent
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, called sleep a biological necessity, not a crime, and said that for some people sleeping outside is the only option. She wrote that the Grants Pass ordinances effectively criminalized being homeless, since the definition of a “campsite” reached the use of so much as a blanket or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. In her view, the majority allowed cities to ban a person simply by attaching a prohibition to an essential bodily function.2Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, No. 23-175
What Legal Protections Still Apply
Grants Pass removed the Eighth Amendment as a shield against camping enforcement. Other protections remain.
Belongings left behind during an encampment sweep are still constitutionally protected. In Lavan v. City of Los Angeles (2012), the Ninth Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment bars cities from seizing and destroying unabandoned personal property belonging to homeless individuals, even when that property is temporarily unattended on a public sidewalk, and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause requires proper procedures before any such taking.7United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lavan v. City of Los Angeles, No. 11-56253 That line of cases survived Grants Pass, because property seizure is a Fourth Amendment question, not an Eighth Amendment one.
Equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment continues to bar enforcement that targets individuals based on race, disability, or other protected characteristics. ADA requirements continue to mandate that government-run shelters be physically accessible.4U.S. Department of Justice. ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments – Chapter 7 Addendum 2 Some states and localities have also adopted their own procedural safeguards for encampment enforcement. California’s Executive Order N-1-24, issued in July 2024, directs state agencies to give at least 48 hours’ notice before removing an encampment absent an emergency and to store collected personal property for at least 60 days.8Office of the Governor of California. Executive Order N-1-24 These are policy choices, not constitutional floors, and future administrations can revise or rescind them.
What Changed for Unhoused Individuals
Under Martin, a person sleeping on a sidewalk in Portland or Phoenix who had no shelter available could not be cited. Under Grants Pass, that same person can be fined, ordered to leave, and ultimately jailed for criminal trespass if they do not comply, whether or not any shelter bed exists.
The legal landscape is now defined by local policy rather than federal constitutional protection. Whether a city prioritizes a shelter-first approach, aggressive enforcement, or something in between is a political question. That is what the Grants Pass majority intended, and what the dissent warned against.