Martin v. City of Boise was a 2018 Ninth Circuit decision holding that the Eighth Amendment barred cities from enforcing public camping bans against homeless people when no shelter beds were available to them. It shaped homelessness enforcement across the western United States for roughly six years. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that framework in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, ruling 6-3 that generally applicable camping ordinances do not violate the Eighth Amendment. Martin is no longer binding federal law, though a handful of states have since built independent protections that mirror what it required.
What the Ninth Circuit Held
Six residents of Boise, Idaho, challenged two city ordinances that criminalized sleeping or camping in public spaces. One banned occupying or sleeping in any public or private building or structure without permission. The other made it a misdemeanor to use streets, sidewalks, parks, or public places as a camping site, with “camping” defined as using public property as a temporary or permanent dwelling.1Supreme Court of the United States. Brief in Opposition – Martin v. City of Boise The plaintiffs argued the ordinances were unconstitutional when Boise’s homeless population exceeded its shelter capacity.
The Ninth Circuit agreed, grounding its decision in the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The court leaned on Robinson v. California, the 1962 Supreme Court case that struck down a state law criminalizing the status of being addicted to narcotics. Robinson stood for the principle that governments cannot punish someone for a condition or status rather than a specific act.2Justia Law. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962) The Ninth Circuit extended that logic: sleeping is a biological necessity, so a person with no indoor option is not choosing to sleep outside. Prosecuting that person for sleeping outdoors, the court reasoned, was functionally the same as prosecuting them for being homeless.3United States Courts. Martin v. City of Boise
The court drew from prior Supreme Court reasoning that the Eighth Amendment “prohibits the state from punishing an involuntary act or condition if it is the unavoidable consequence of one’s status or being.”3United States Courts. Martin v. City of Boise That framing produced the rule Martin became known for: cities could not cite people for sleeping in public when there was no place indoors for them to go.
When Shelter Counted as Available
Martin’s practical impact turned on a specific trigger. Cities could enforce anti-camping ordinances only when shelter beds were actually available for the people being cited, and the Ninth Circuit defined “available” narrowly. A bed did not count if the shelter imposed conditions that effectively excluded certain individuals.
Religious requirements were the leading example. One Boise Rescue Mission shelter permitted stays of up to 17 days in its Emergency Services Program. After that, the only way to remain was enrolling in a faith-based discipleship program with mandatory religious programming. The court held that the government cannot use the threat of criminal prosecution to coerce someone into attending religious services, so beds conditioned on religious participation were legally unavailable to nonbelievers.4United States Courts. Martin v. City of Boise (Amended Opinion)
Time limits mattered too. Once a person’s 17-day or 30-day stay expired, they could not return for at least 30 days. On nights when other shelters were full, that individual would have had to choose between sleeping outside and abandoning their religious convictions to access a bed.4United States Courts. Martin v. City of Boise (Amended Opinion) The court treated that as no real choice. Cities were expected to verify actual bed vacancy before issuing citations, which pushed local governments to track shelter capacity in real time rather than point to a shelter’s theoretical existence.
What Martin Did Not Prevent
The Ninth Circuit tried to draw a line between punishing people for sleeping and regulating how they camped. Cities could still restrict large tents, semi-permanent structures, and accumulations of belongings that obstructed public spaces. What they could not do was prevent people from using blankets, sleeping bags, or basic protection against the elements when no shelter beds were open.5IMLA. Supreme Court Overrules Martin v. Boise in Important Homeless Encampment Case
In practice, the line was hard to police. Where does sleeping with a blanket end and camping begin? The court never gave a bright-line test, and officers had to make judgment calls on every encounter. That ambiguity became one of the recurring criticisms of the framework and a central issue when the Supreme Court eventually took up the question.
How the Supreme Court Overturned It
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s approach in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Gorsuch held that “the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.”6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined.
The majority read the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause as addressing the method or severity of punishment imposed after conviction, not as a limit on what conduct a government may criminalize. In its view, the Ninth Circuit had stretched the Eighth Amendment far beyond its scope.6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
The disagreement came down to how to read Robinson v. California. The Ninth Circuit had interpreted Robinson broadly: if conduct is an involuntary byproduct of a status, punishing the conduct is the same as punishing the status. The Supreme Court rejected that reading. Grants Pass ordinances applied to anyone camping on public property regardless of housing situation, which made them generally applicable regulations of conduct, not laws targeting a class of people.6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
The majority drew a parallel to Powell v. Texas, the 1968 case upholding a public intoxication conviction against a chronic alcoholic. Being drunk in public may be a consequence of alcoholism, but the law prohibited the act, not the condition. Sleeping outside may likewise be a consequence of homelessness, but a camping ordinance prohibits the act of occupying public space overnight rather than the status of being homeless. The Court was also critical of the questions Martin forced judges to answer: what counts as “involuntary” homelessness, when is a shelter “practically available,” and how many beds make enforcement permissible. Those answers, the majority wrote, “cannot be found in the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.”6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented. “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” she wrote. For people with no access to shelter, the dissent argued, ordinances banning public sleeping effectively punish the status of being homeless by criminalizing a bodily function inseparable from that status. The practical consequence, in the dissent’s framing, was an impossible choice between staying awake indefinitely or being arrested.6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
What Homeless Defendants Can Still Argue
Because Martin no longer applies, the Eighth Amendment no longer requires cities to verify shelter capacity before enforcing camping ordinances, and there is no general federal statute that fills the gap. The Supreme Court’s majority did note that other legal avenues remain open. These include defenses of necessity, duress, and diminished capacity, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which “prevents governments from adopting laws that invidiously discriminate between persons.”6Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson These alternatives are harder to win than Martin’s bright-line rule, but they exist.
Due process protections also apply when cities clear encampments. Courts have held that sweeps violate the Fourteenth Amendment unless the government provides reasonable notice. There is no universally mandated notice period, but courts have found that as little as ten minutes of warning can be constitutionally inadequate. Cities must also preserve personal property that has not been abandoned and provide information about where displaced individuals can reclaim their belongings. The fact that an encampment violates a local ordinance does not eliminate these rights.
State Laws That Preserve Martin’s Approach
Some states codified Martin’s principles into their own law, and those protections were unaffected by Grants Pass because they rest on state legislative authority rather than the Eighth Amendment.
Oregon is the clearest example. In 2021, the state enacted ORS 195.530, which requires that any city or county law regulating sitting, lying, sleeping, or keeping warm and dry on public property “must be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness.” The statute lets individuals raise an affirmative defense that a local law fails this reasonableness test and permits lawsuits for injunctive or declaratory relief. Reasonableness is judged on the totality of the circumstances, including the law’s impact on people experiencing homelessness. A coalition of business interests and municipalities is now pushing Initiative Petition 2026-054, which would repeal ORS 195.530 and let cities criminalize homeless camping regardless of shelter capacity. The Oregon Secretary of State received a draft ballot title in December 2025, with the initiative targeted for the November 2026 general election.7Oregon Secretary of State. 2026 Initiative Petition 54 Draft Ballot Title
Washington is considering something similar. HB 2489, introduced in the 2025-26 legislative session, would prohibit cities and counties from enforcing laws that criminalize “life-sustaining activities” on public property unless the government can show that adequate alternative shelter was available at the time of the alleged violation. The bill defines life-sustaining activities to include sleeping, resting, eating, and protecting oneself from the elements, and sets a high bar for what counts as adequate shelter, requiring accommodation for disabilities, pets, partners, and personal possessions. As of early 2026, the bill had been reported out of the House Committee on Housing but not enacted.8Washington State Legislature. House Bill Report HB 2489
Why Martin Still Matters
Even without binding force, Martin shaped nearly a decade of homelessness policy and forced a national argument about when enforcement crosses into punishing poverty. Its shelter-capacity framework pushed cities to track bed availability and tie enforcement decisions to actual social service capacity. The practical questions it raised about what makes shelter “available” remain live wherever state or local law still conditions enforcement on shelter access. Cities outside the former Ninth Circuit footprint had also moderated their own enforcement for years out of concern that Martin’s reasoning might spread. Grants Pass reset the legal landscape, but the underlying policy debate did not disappear with it. It moved from federal courtrooms to state legislatures and city councils.