The decision allows cities and counties to take more aggressive actions against homeless encampments, but does not require them to do so. It will be critical for communities to be vigilant about what additional powers cities and counties seek to assert for themselves.
The Grants Pass decision held that the Oregon law criminalized conduct - camping outside - not status. The liberal members of the court dissented, pointing out the Oregon law was designed to target and only being enforced against unhoused people, in violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
As a civil rights attorney, I join the dissenters in lamenting the abdication of the court's role in protecting basic civil liberties spelled out in the Constitution. The justices were split along ideological lines, and the concept of 'dignity' - a concept that frequently appears in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence - goes unmentioned by the court majority and is relegated to the three-justice dissent.
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