Abstract
The U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson was consequential both for the judicial system and for homeless defendants. The Court's holding that ordinances punishing sleeping and camping outside were not cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth Amendment opened the floodgates for municipalities to either pass or enhance enforcement of such ordinances. What followed was an increase in the number of homeless defendants in the court system. Not only does this Grants Pass result put more pressure on already overburdened court dockets, but it also exacerbates an already broken system in which the most vulnerable individuals end up in court because of an act that more closely resembles a status.
This Note presents a two-tiered solution. It suggests an expansion of the homeless court system to reduce the post-Grants Pass burden on courts and homeless defendants. But to accomplish this, state and local governments must obtain funding and services to connect homeless court graduates with housing. Drug courts provide a model for achieving these goals. If homeless courts adopted drug courts' best practices and funding strategies, more homeless defendants caught in the web of post-Grants Pass ordinances could receive assistance.
Citation
Paige Kupas,
Grants Pass and Its New Defendants: Looking to Drug Courts to Improve Homeless Courts,
76 Duke Law Journal
329-366
(2026)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol76/iss2/4