In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction against San Francisco, preventing the city from enforcing its ordinance against camping on public property based on its precedents in Martin v. City of Boise and Johnson v. City of Grants Pass. The decision was 2-1, with Judge Bumatay dissenting, noting that “there’s nothing in the text, history, and tradition of the [Cruel and Unusual Punishment] Clause that comes close to prohibiting enforcement of commonplace anti-vagrancy laws, like laws against sleeping on sidewalks and in parks.”
Last week the Supreme Court reversed in Grants Pass, taking the same view of the Eighth Amendment as Judge Bumatay. See this post.
Today, the Ninth withdrew its published opinion and replaced it with a brief “memorandum,” i.e., an unpublished opinion.
The anti-anti-camping injunction is vacated. The court of appeals affirmed the district court’s injunction to the extent that it requires, on Fourth Amendment grounds, the city to comply with its own “tag and bag” policy regarding homeless persons’ belongings.
