Many cities across the American West face a homelessness crisis. The causes are varied and complex, the appropriate Policy, Michael A. Zarian, Deputy Solicitor General, Austin Knudsen, Attorney General of Montana, Christian B. Corrigan, Solicitor General, Brent Mead, Deputy Solicitor General, and Peter M. Torstensen, Jr., Deputy Solicitor General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Steve Marshall of Alabama, Tim Griffn of Arkansas, Ashley Moody of Florida, Chris Carr of Georgia, Theodore E. Rokita of Indiana, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Kris W. Kobach of Kansas, Russell Cole man of Kentucky, Liz Murrill of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, Andrew Bailey of Missouri, Michael T. Hilgers of Nebraska, Drew H. Wrigley of North Dakota, Dave Yost of Ohio, Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Ken Paxton of Texas, Sean D. Reyes of Utah, Jason S. Miyares of Virginia, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia; for California Governor Gavin Newsom by David R. Carpenter and Collin P. Wedel; for Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Ben Toma et al. by Brunn W. Roysden III, Rusty D. Crandell, and Linley Wilson; for the County of Orange, California, by Marianne Van Riper, Laura D. Knapp, and Golnaz Zandieh; for the City and County of San Francisco et al. by Tara M. Steeley; for the City of Chico by Eric G. Sal bert; for the City of Phoenix et al. by Justin S. Pierce; for the City of San Clemente by Yaakov M. Roth and Alex Potapov; for Thirteen California Cities by Tiffany J. Israel; for the Bay Area Council et al. by David C. Casarrubias and Samantha D. Wolff; for the Brentwood Community Council by Fred Heather; for the California State Association of Counties et al. by Jennifer Bacon Henning; for the California State Sheriffs' Association et al. by Denise Lynch Rocawich and James R. Touchstone; for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. by Robert E. Dunn; for the Cicero Institute by Jeffrey M. Harris; for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S. Scheidegger; for the District Attorney of Sacramento County by Thien Ho, pro se, Colin Jones, Amanda L. Iler, and Albert C. Locher; for the Goldwater Institute by Timothy Sande- fur; for the League of Oregon Cities et al. by Anit K. Jindal; for the Local Government Legal Center et al. by Ann Davison, Brandon Rain, Amanda Karras, Erich Eiselt, Anne R. Helzer, Wynetta Massey, and Mi chael Webb; for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce et al. by Eric S. Boorstin and Jeremy B. Rosen; for the Manhattan Institute et al. by Ilya Shapiro; for Members of Congress by John M. Reeves; for Neighbors for a Better San Francisco et al. by Christopher G. Michel and Rachel public policy responses perhaps no less so. Like many local governments, the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, has pursued a multifaceted approach. Recently, it adopted various policies aimed at “protecting the rights, dignity[,] and private prop- G. Frank; for the Offce of the San Diego County District Attorney by Ronald A. Jakob; for the Pacifc Legal Foundation et al. by Mark Miller; for the Retail Litigation Center, Inc., et al. by Michelle S. Kallen, Deborah White, and Larissa M. Whittingham; for the Venice Stakeholders Association by Jeffrey Lewis; for Michael J. Z. Mannheimer by Richard A. Simp son and Michael J. Z. Mannheimer, pro se; for John F. Stinneford by Mat thew A. Schwartz; and for Tiana Tozer et al. by John A. DiLorenzo, Jr., and Seth R. Tangman.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the State of Maryland et al. by Anthony G. Brown, Attorney General of Maryland, and Joshua M. Segal, Assistant Attorney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Kwame Raoul of Illinois, An drea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Letitia James of New York, and Charity R. Clark of Vermont; for Advocates for Empowerment CA by Hunter Pyle; for Advocates for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence by Katherine Walz; for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Jennifer A. Wedekind and David D. Cole; for the American Psychiatric Association et al. by Aaron M. Panner; for the Center for Constitutional Rights et al. by Andrea Chinyere Ezie; for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless et al. by Steven P. Blonder and Josh M. Leavitt; for Congressional Members by William H. Knight; for the Constitutional Accountability Center by Elizabeth B. Wydra, Brianne J. Gorod, and Brian R. Frazelle; for the Corporation for Supportive Housing et al. by Michelle Pallak and Jaynee LaVecchia; for Criminal Law and Punishment Scholars by Gregory Cui and Andrea Lewis Hartung; for Current and Former San Francisco Offcials et al. by Rachel Sheridan; for Current U. N. Special Rapporteurs by David Venderbush; for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund et al. by Jonathan Rosenberg, David A. Lash, and Maria Michelle Uzeta; for the Emory Civil Rights Society by Paul Koster; for the Fines and Fees Justice Center et al. by Hyland Hunt and Ruthanne M. Deutsch; for the Fund for Empowerment by Andrew Kim and Benjamin L. Rundall; for the Juvenile Law Center et al. by Marsha L. Levick, Jessica R. Feierman, Richard Saenz, Karen L. Loewy, Angela C. Vigil, and Nicholas O. Kennedy; for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law et al. by Damon Hewitt, Jon Greenbaum, and Thomas Silverstein; for the Local Progress Impact Lab et al. by Michael P. Abate and Heather Gatnarek; for The Los Angeles Catholic Worker Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication erty of the homeless.” App. 152. It appointed a “homeless community liaison” offcer charged with ensuring the homeless receive information about “assistance programs and other resources” available to them through the city and its et al. by Carol A. Sobel, Paul L. Hoffman, and Mark Rosenbaum; for the National Alliance to End Homelessness et al. by Lauren Willard Zehmer; for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans et al. by David Vender bush; for the National Coalition for Men by James E. Preston; for the National Homelessness Law Center by Angela M. Liu and William H. Knight; for the National Police Accountability Project et al. by Jim Davy; for the National Women's Shelter Network, Inc., et al. by Brigid Cech Samole, Sheila Oretsky, Emily A. Fitzgerald, and Jonathan S. Z. Her mann; for the Oregon Food Bank et al. by David B. Conrad; for Oregon Quakers: South Mountain Friends Meeting et al. by James E. Lobsenz and Isaac Prevost; for Public Health Professionals et al. by Laura E. Powell, Gilbert T. Smolenski, and Kevin S. Prussia; for the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center by David Venderbush; for Services Providers by Lila Miller and Valerie D. Comenencia Ortiz; for the Southern Poverty Law Center et al. by Kirsten Anderson, Ellen Degnan, Micah West, and Crystal McElrath; for the StrongHearts Native Helpline et al. by Deborah Greenspan; for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by Clifford M. Sloan, Jaime A. Santos, and Rohiniyurie Tashima; for the Western Regional Advocacy Project by Justin Olson; for Matthew Doherty et al. by Ricardo J. Bonilla; for William P. Quigley et al. by Carmen Iguina González and Joshua Matz; and for 57 Social Scientists with Published Research on Homelessness by Leslie Bailey and Brian Hardingham.
Briefs of amici curiae were fled for the State of California by Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Michael J. Mongan, Solicitor General, Teresa A. Reed Dippo, Deputy Solicitor General, Christina Bull Arndt, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Kristin A. Liska and Mitchell Rishe, Deputy Attorneys General, and Alice X. Wang, Associate Deputy Solicitor General; for the County of Los Angeles by Mira Hashmall and Nadia A. Sarkis; for San Bernardino County, California, by Cale Jaffe and Thomas Bunton; for the City of Los Angeles by Michael M. Walsh, Valerie Flores, Scott Marcus, Michael Dundas, and Shaun Dabby Jacobs; for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty by Eric C. Rassbach; for Better Days Ahead Outreach Inc., et al. by Mary H. Tolbert, Kevin Quisenberry, and Marielle Macher; for the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People and Families Movement et al. by David J. Chizewer; for the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission by William F. Gary; for the International Downtown Association local shelter. Id., at 152–153; Brief for Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission as Amicus Curiae 2–3. And it adopted certain restrictions against encampments on public property. App. 155–156. The Ninth Circuit, however, held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause barred that last measure. With support from States and cities across the country, Grants Pass urged this Court to review the Ninth Circuit's decision. We take up that task now.
I
A
Some suggest that homelessness may be the “defning public health and safety crisis in the western United States” today. 72 F. 4th 868, 934 (CA9 2023) (Smith, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). According to the federal government, homelessness in this country has reached its highest levels since the government began reporting data on the subject in 2007. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Offce of Community Planning & Development, T. de Sousa et al., The 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress 2–3 (2023). California alone is home to around half of those in this Nation living without shelter on a given night. Id., at 30. And each of the fve States with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness in the country—California, Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona, and Ne- vada—lies in the American West. Id., at 17.
Those experiencing homelessness may be as diverse as the Nation itself—they are young and old and belong to all races and creeds. People become homeless for a variety of reasons, too, many beyond their control. Some have been afet al. by Matthew Donald Umhofer and Elizabeth A. Mitchell; for the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice et al. by Charles F. Smith; for the LONANG Institute by Kerry Lee Morgan and Randall A. Pentiuk; for the Pacifc Research Institute by Erik S. Jaffe; and for Peter W. Low et al. by Joel S. Johnson and Peter W. Low, both pro se. Page Proof Pending Publication fected by economic conditions, rising housing costs, or natural disasters. Id., at 37; see Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 2–3. Some have been forced from their homes to escape domestic violence and other forms of exploitation. Ibid. And still others struggle with drug addiction and mental illness. By one estimate, perhaps 78 percent of the unsheltered suffer from mental-health issues, while 75 percent struggle with substance abuse. See J. Rountree, N. Hess, & A. Lyke, Health Conditions Among Unsheltered Adults in the U. S., Calif. Policy Lab, Policy Brief 5 (2019). Those living without shelter often live together. L. Dun- ton et al., Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Offce of Policy Development & Research, Exploring Homelessness Among People Living in Encampments and Associated Cost 1 (2020) (2020 HUD Report). As the number of homeless individuals has grown, the number of homeless encampments across the country has increased as well, “in numbers not seen in almost a century.” Ibid. The unsheltered may coalesce in these encampments for a range of reasons. Some value the “freedom” encampment living provides compared with submitting to the rules shelters impose. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Offce of Policy Development and Research, R. Cohen, W. Yetvin, & J. Khadduri, Understanding Encampments of People Experiencing Homelessness and Community Responses 5 (2019). Others report that encampments offer a “sense of community.” Id., at 7. And still others may seek them out for “dependable access to illegal drugs.” Ibid. In brief, the reasons why someone will go without shelter on a given night vary widely by the person and by the day. See ibid.
As the number and size of these encampments have grown, so have the challenges they can pose for the homeless and others. We are told, for example, that the “exponential increase in . . . encampments in recent years has resulted in an increase in crimes both against the homeless and by the homeless.” Brief for California State Sheriffs' Association Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication et al. as Amici Curiae 21 (California Sheriffs Brief). California's Governor reports that encampment inhabitants face heightened risks of “sexual assault” and “subjugation to sex work.” Brief for California Governor Gavin Newsom as Amicus Curiae 11 (California Governor Brief). And by one estimate, more than 40 percent of the shootings in Seattle in early 2022 were linked to homeless encampments. Brief for Washington State Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs as Amicus Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 10 (Washington Sheriffs Brief).
Other challenges have arisen as well. Some city offcials indicate that encampments facilitate the distribution of drugs like heroin and fentanyl, which have claimed the lives of so many Americans in recent years. Brief for Offce of the San Diego County District Attorney as Amicus Curiae 17–19. Without running water or proper sanitation facilities, too, diseases can sometimes spread in encampments and beyond them. Various States say that they have seen typhus, shigella, trench fever, and other diseases reemerge on their city streets. California Governor Brief 12; Brief for Idaho et al. as Amici Curiae 7 (States Brief).
Nor do problems like these affect everyone equally.
Often, encampments are found in a city's “poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods.” Brief for City and County of San Francisco et al. as Amici Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 5 (San Francisco Cert. Brief); see also 2020 HUD Report 9. With encampments dotting neighborhood sidewalks, adults and children in these communities are sometimes forced to navigate around used needles, human waste, and other hazards to make their way to school, the grocery store, or work. San Francisco Cert. Brief 5; States Brief 8; California Governor Brief 11–12. Those with physical disabilities report this can pose a special challenge for them, as they may lack the mobility to maneuver safely around the encampments. San Francisco Cert. Brief 5; see also Brief for Tiana Tozer et al. as Amici Curiae 1–6 (Tozer Brief).
Page Proof Pending Publication Communities of all sizes are grappling with how best to address challenges like these. As they have throughout the Nation's history, charitable organizations “serve as the backbone of the emergency shelter system in this country,” accounting for roughly 40 percent of the country's shelter beds for single adults on a given night. See National Alliance To End Homelessness, Faith-Based Organizations: Fundamental Partners in Ending Homelessness 1 (2017). Many private organizations, city offcials, and States have worked, as well, to increase the availability of affordable housing in order to provide more permanent shelter for those in need. See Brief for Local Government Legal Center et al. as Amici Curiae 4, 32 (Cities Brief). But many, too, have come to the conclusion that, as they put it, “[j]ust building more shelter beds and public housing options is almost certainly not the answer by itself.” Id., at 11.
As many cities see it, even as they have expanded shelter capacity and other public services, their unsheltered populations have continued to grow. Id., at 9–11. The city of Seattle, for example, reports that roughly 60 percent of its offers of shelter have been rejected in a recent year. See id., at 28, and n. 26. Offcials in Portland, Oregon, indicate that, between April 2022 and January 2024, over 70 percent of their approximately 3,500 offers of shelter beds to homeless individuals were declined. Brief for League of Oregon Cities et al. as Amici Curiae 5 (Oregon Cities Brief). Other cities tell us that “the vast majority of their homeless populations are not actively seeking shelter and refuse all services.” Brief for Thirteen California Cities as Amici Curiae 3. Surveys cited by the Department of Justice suggest that only “25–41 percent” of “homeless encampment residents” “willingly” accept offers of shelter beds. See Dept. of Justice, Offce of Community Oriented Policing Services, S. Chamard, Homeless Encampments 36 (2010).
The reasons why the unsheltered sometimes reject offers of assistance may themselves be many and complex. Some Page Proof Pending Publication may reject shelter because accepting it would take them further from family and local ties. See Brief for 57 Social Scientists as Amici Curiae 20. Some may decline offers of assistance because of concerns for their safety or the rules some shelters impose regarding curfews, drug use, or religious practices. Id., at 22; see Cities Brief 29. Other factors may also be at play. But whatever the causes, local governments say, this dynamic signifcantly complicates their efforts to address the challenges of homelessness. See id., at 11.
Rather than focus on a single policy to meet the challenges associated with homelessness, many States and cities have pursued a range of policies and programs. See 2020 HUD Report 14–20. Beyond expanding shelter and affordable housing opportunities, some have reinvested in mental- health and substance-abuse treatment programs. See Brief for California State Association of Counties et al. as Amici Curiae 20, 25; see also 2020 HUD Report 23. Some have trained their employees in outreach tactics designed to improve relations between governments and the homeless they serve. Ibid. And still others have chosen to pair these efforts with the enforcement of laws that restrict camping in public places, like parks, streets, and sidewalks. Cities Brief 11.
Laws like those are commonplace. By one count, “a majority of cities have laws restricting camping in public spaces,” and nearly forty percent “have one or more laws prohibiting camping citywide.” See Brief for Western Regional Advocacy Project as Amicus Curiae 7, n. 15 (emphasis deleted). Some have argued that the enforcement of these laws can create a “revolving door that circulates individuals experiencing homelessness from the street to the criminal justice system and back.” U. S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, Searching Out Solutions 6 (2012). But many cities take a different view. According to the National League of Cities (a group that represents more than 19,000 American cities and towns), the National Association of Counties (which represents the Nation's 3,069 counties), and others across the American West, these public-camping regulations are not usually deployed as a front-line response “to criminalize homelessness.” Cities Brief 11. Instead, they are used to provide city employees with the legal authority to address “encampments that pose signifcant health and safety risks” and to encourage their inhabitants to accept other alternatives like shelters, drug treatment programs, and mental-health facilities. Ibid. Cities are not alone in pursuing this approach. The federal government also restricts “the storage of . . . sleeping bags,” as well as other “sleeping activities,” on park lands. 36 CFR §§7.96(i), (j)(1) (2023). And it, too, has exercised that authority to clear certain “dangerous” encampments.
National Park Service, Record of Determination for Clearing the Unsheltered Encampment at McPherson Square and Temporary Park Closure for Rehabilitation (Feb. 13, 2023). Different governments may use these laws in different ways and to varying degrees. See Cities Brief 11. But many broadly agree that “policymakers need access to the full panoply of tools in the policy toolbox” to “tackle the complicated issues of housing and homelessness.” California Governor Brief 16; accord, Cities Brief 11; Oregon Cities Brief 17.
B
Five years ago, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit took one of those tools off the table. In Martin v. Boise, 920 F. 3d 584 (2019), that court considered a public- camping ordinance in Boise, Idaho, that made it a misdemeanor to use “streets, sidewalks, parks, or public places” for “camping.” Id., at 603 (internal quotation marks omitted). According to the Ninth Circuit, the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause barred Boise from enforcing its public-camping ordinance against homeless individuals who lacked “access to alternative shelter.” Id., at Page Proof Pending Publication 615. That “access” was lacking, the court said, whenever “ `there is a greater number of homeless individuals in a jurisdiction than the number of available beds in shelters.' ” Id., at 617 (alterations omitted). According to the Ninth Circuit, nearly three quarters of Boise's shelter beds were not “practically available” because the city's charitable shelters had a “religious atmosphere.” Id., at 609–610, 618.
Boise was thus enjoined from enforcing its camping laws against the plaintiffs. Ibid. No other circuit has followed Martin's lead with respect to public-camping laws. Nor did the decision go unremarked within the Ninth Circuit. When the full court denied rehearing en banc, several judges wrote separately to note their dissent. In one statement, Judge Bennett argued that Martin was inconsistent with the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. That provision, Judge Bennett contended, prohibits certain methods of punishment a government may impose after a criminal conviction, but it does not “impose [any] substantive limits on what conduct a state may criminalize.” Id., at 599–602. In another statement, Judge Smith lamented that Martin had “shackle[d] the hands of public offcials trying to redress the serious societal concern of homelessness.” Id., at 590. He predicted the decision would “wrea[k] havoc on local governments, residents, and businesses” across the American West. Ibid. After Martin, similar suits proliferated against Western cities within the Ninth Circuit. As Judge Smith put it, “[i]f one picks up a map of the western United States and points to a city that appears on it, there is a good chance that city has already faced” a judicial injunction based on Martin or the threat of one “in the few short years since [the Ninth Circuit] initiated its Martin experiment.” 72 F. 4th, at 940; see, e. g., Boyd v. San Rafael, 2023 WL 7283885, *1–*2 (ND Cal., Nov. 2, 2023); Fund for Empowerment v. Phoenix, 646 F. Supp. 3d 1117, 1132 (Ariz. 2022); Warren v. Chico, 2021 WL 2894648, *3 (ED Cal., July 8, 2021).
Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication Consider San Francisco, where each night thousands sleep “in tents and other makeshift structures.” Brief for City and County of San Francisco et al. as Amici Curiae 8 (San Francisco Brief). Applying Martin, a district court entered an injunction barring the city from enforcing “laws and ordinances to prohibit involuntarily homeless individuals from sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property.” Coalition on Homelessness v. San Francisco, 647 F. Supp. 3d 806, 841 (ND Cal. 2022). That “misapplication of this Court's Eighth Amendment precedents,” the Mayor tells us, has “severely constrained San Francisco's ability to address the homelessness crisis.” San Francisco Brief 7. The city “uses enforcement of its laws prohibiting camping” not to criminalize homelessness, but “as one important tool among others to encourage individuals experiencing homelessness to accept services and to help ensure safe and accessible sidewalks and public spaces.” Id., at 7–8. Judicial intervention restricting the use of that tool, the Mayor continues, “has led to painful results on the streets and in neighborhoods.” Id., at 8. “San Francisco has seen over half of its offers of shelter and services rejected by unhoused individuals, who often cite” the Martin order against the city “as their justifcation to permanently occupy and block public sidewalks.” Id., at 8–9.
An exceptionally large number of cities and States have fled briefs in this Court reporting experiences like San Francisco's. In the judgment of many of them, the Ninth Circuit has inappropriately “limit[ed] the tools available to local governments for tackling [what is a] complex and diffcult human issue.” Oregon Cities Brief 2. The threat of Martin injunctions, they say, has “paralyze[d]” even commonsense and good-faith efforts at addressing homelessness. Brief for City of Phoenix et al. as Amici Curiae 36 (Phoenix Brief). The Ninth Circuit's intervention, they insist, has prevented local governments from pursuing “effective solutions to this humanitarian crisis while simultaneously proPage Proof Pending Publication tecting the remaining community's right to safely enjoy public spaces.” Brief for International Municipal Lawyers Association et al. as Amici Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 27 (Cities Cert. Brief); States Brief 11 (“State and local governments in the Ninth Circuit have attempted a variety of solutions to address the problems that public encampments infict on their communities,” only to have those “efforts . . . shut down by federal courts”).
Many cities further report that, rather than help alleviate the homelessness crisis, Martin injunctions have inadvertently contributed to it.
The numbers of “[u]nsheltered homelessness,” they represent, have “increased dramatically in the Ninth Circuit since Martin.” Brief for League of Oregon Cities et al. as Amici Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 7 (boldface and capitalization deleted). And, they say, Martin injunctions have contributed to this trend by “weaken[ing]” the ability of public offcials “to persuade persons experiencing homelessness to accept shelter beds and [other] services.” Brief for Ten California Cities et al. as Amici Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 2. In Portland, for example, residents report some unsheltered persons “often return within days” of an encampment's clearing, on the understanding that “Martin ... and its progeny prohibit the [c]ity from implementing more effcacious strategies.” Tozer Brief 5; Washington Sheriffs Brief 14 (Martin divests offcers of the “ability to compel [unsheltered] persons to leave encampments and obtain necessary services”). In short, they say, Martin “make[s] solving this crisis harder.” Cities Cert. Brief 3.
All acknowledge “[h]omelessness is a complex and serious social issue that cries out for effective . . . responses.” Ibid. But many States and cities believe “it is crucial” for local governments to “have the latitude” to experiment and fnd effective responses. Id., at 27; States Brief 13–17. “Injunctions and the threat of federal litigation,” they insist, “impede this democratic process,” undermine local governments, and do not well serve the homeless or others who live in the Ninth Circuit. Cities Cert. Brief 27–28.
C
The case before us arises from a Martin injunction issued against the city of Grants Pass. Located on the banks of the Rogue River in southwestern Oregon, the city is home to roughly 38,000 people. Among them are an estimated 600 individuals who experience homelessness on a given day. 72 F. 4th, at 874; App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a–168a; 212a–213a. Like many American cities, Grants Pass has laws restricting camping in public spaces. Three are relevant here.
The frst prohibits sleeping “on public sidewalks, streets, or alleyways.” Grants Pass Municipal Code § 5.61.020(A) (2023); App. to Pet. for Cert. 221a. The second prohibits “[c]amping” on public property. §5.61.030; App. to Pet. for Cert. 222a (boldface deleted). Camping is defned as “set[ting] up . . . or . . . remain[ing] in or at a campsite,” and a “[c]ampsite” is defned as “any place where bedding, sleeping bag[s], or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fre is placed . . . for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.” §§ 5.61.010(A)–(B); App. to Pet. for Cert. 221a. The third prohibits “[c]amping” and “[o]vernight parking” in the city's parks. §§6.46.090(A)–(B); 72 F. 4th, at 876. Penalties for violating these ordinances escalate stepwise. An initial violation may trigger a fne.
§§ 1.36.010(I)–(J). Those who receive multiple citations may be subject to an order barring them from city parks for 30 days. § 6.46.350; App. to Pet. for Cert. 174a. And, in turn, violations of those orders can constitute criminal trespass, punishable by a maximum of 30 days in prison and a $1,250 fine. Ore. Rev. Stat. §§ 164.245, 161.615(3), 161.635(1)(c) (2023).
Neither of the named plaintiffs before us has been subjected to an order barring them from city property or to Page Proof Pending Publication criminal trespass charges. Perhaps that is because the city has traditionally taken a light-touch approach to enforcement. The city's offcers are directed “to provide law enforcement services to all members of the community while protecting the rights, dignity[,] and private property of the homeless.” App. 152, Grants Pass Dept. of Public Safety Policy Manual ¶428.1.1 (Dec. 17, 2018). Officers are instructed that “[h]omelessness is not a crime.” Ibid. And they are “encouraged” to render “aid” and “support” to the homeless whenever possible. Id., at 153, ¶428.3.1 Still, shortly after the panel decision in Martin, two homeless individuals, Gloria Johnson and John Logan, fled suit challenging the city's public-camping laws. App. 37, Third Amended Complaint ¶¶6–7. They claimed, among other things, that the city's ordinances violated the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Id., at 51, ¶66. And they sought to pursue their claim on behalf of a class encompassing “all involuntarily homeless people living in Grants Pass.” Id., at 48, ¶52.2 1The dissent cites minutes from a community roundtable meeting to suggest that offcials in Grants Pass harbored only punitive motives when adopting their camping ban. Post, at 575–576 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). But the dissent tells at best half the story about that meeting. In his opening remarks, the Mayor stressed that the city's goal was to “fnd a balance between providing the help [homeless] people need and not enabling . . . aggressive negative behavior” some community members had experienced. App. 112. And, by all accounts, the “purpose” of the meeting was to “develo[p] strategies to . . . connect [homeless] people to services.” Ibid. The city manager and others explained that the city was dealing with problems of “harassment” and “defecation in public places” by those who seemingly “do not want to receive services.” Id., at 113, 118–120. At the same time, they celebrated “the strong commitment” from “faith-based entities” and a “huge number of people” in the city, who have “come together for projects” to support the homeless, including by securing “funding for a sobering center.” Id., at 115, 123. 2Another named plaintiff, Debra Blake, passed away while this case was pending in the Ninth Circuit, and her claims are not before us. 72 F. 4th 868, 880, n. 12 (2023). Before us, the city does not dispute that the rePage Proof Pending Publication The district court certifed the class action and enjoined the city from enforcing its public-camping laws against the homeless. While Ms. Johnson and Mr. Logan generally sleep in their vehicles, the court held, they could adequately represent the class, for sleeping in a vehicle can sometimes count as unlawful “ `camping' ” under the relevant ordinances. App. to Pet. for Cert. 219a (quoting Grants Pass Municipal Code § 5.61.010). And, the court found, everyone without shelter in Grants Pass was “involuntarily homeless” because the city's total homeless population outnumbered its “ `practically available' ” shelter beds. App. to Pet. for Cert. 179a, 216a. In fact, the court ruled, none of the beds at Grants Pass's charity-run shelter qualifed as “available.” They did not, the court said, both because that shelter offers something closer to transitional housing than “temporary emergency shelter,” and because the shelter has rules requiring residents to abstain from smoking and attend religious services. Id., at 179a–180a. The Eighth Amendment, the district court thus concluded, prohibited Grants Pass from enforcing its laws against homeless individuals in the city. Id., at 182a–183a.
A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affrmed in relevant part. 72 F. 4th, at 874–896. The majority agreed with the district court that all unsheltered individuals in Grants Pass qualify as “involuntarily homeless” because the city's homeless population exceeds “available” shelter beds. Id., at 894. And the majority further agreed that, under Martin, the homeless there cannot be punished for camping with “rudimentary forms of protection from the elements.” 72 F. 4th, at 896. In dissent, Judge Collins questioned Martin's consistency with the Eighth Amendment and lamented its “dire practical consequences” for the city and others like it. 72 F. 4th, at 914 (internal quotation marks omitted).
maining named plaintiffs face a credible threat of sanctions under its ordinances.
Page Proof Pending Publication The city sought rehearing en banc, which the court denied over the objection of 17 judges who joined fve separate opinions. Id., at 869, 924–945. Judge O'Scannlain, joined by 14 judges, criticized Martin's “jurisprudential experiment” as “egregiously fawed and deeply damaging—at war with constitutional text, history, and tradition.” 72 F. 4th, at 925, 926, n. 2. Judge Bress, joined by 11 judges, contended that Martin has “add[ed] enormous and unjustifed complication to an already extremely complicated set of circumstances.” 72 F. 4th, at 945. And Judge Smith, joined by several others, described in painstaking detail the ways in which, in his view, Martin had thwarted good-faith attempts by cities across the West, from Phoenix to Sacramento, to address homelessness. 72 F. 4th, at 934, 940–943.
Grants Pass fled a petition for certiorari. A large number of States, cities, and counties from across the Ninth Circuit and the country joined Grants Pass in urging the Court to grant review to assess the Martin experiment. See Part I–B, supra. We agreed to do so. 601 U. S. 994 (2024).3 3Supporters of Grants Pass's petition for certiorari included: The cities of Albuquerque, Anchorage, Chico, Chino, Colorado Springs, Fillmore, Garden Grove, Glendora, Henderson, Honolulu, Huntington Beach, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Murrieta, Newport Beach, Orange, Phoenix, Placentia, Portland, Providence, Redondo Beach, Roseville, Saint Paul, San Clemente, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, and Westminster; the National League of Cities, representing more than 19,000 American cities and towns; the League of California Cities, representing 477 California cities; the League of Oregon Cities, representing Oregon's 241 cities; the Association of Idaho Cities, representing Idaho's 199 cities; the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, representing all 91 incorporated Arizona municipalities; the North Dakota League of Cities, comprising 355 cities; the Counties of Honolulu, San Bernardino, San Francisco, and Orange; the National Association of Counties, which represents the Nation's 3,069 counties; the California State Association of Counties, representing California's 58 counties; the Special Districts Association of Oregon, representing all of Oregon's special districts; the Washington State Association of Municipal Attorneys, a nonproft corporation comprising attorneys representing Washington's 281 cities and Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication
II
A
The Constitution and its Amendments impose a number of limits on what governments in this country may declare to be criminal behavior and how they may go about enforcing their criminal laws. Familiarly, the First Amendment prohibits governments from using their criminal laws to abridge the rights to speak, worship, assemble, petition, and exercise the freedom of the press. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents governments from adopting laws that invidiously discriminate between persons. The Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments ensure that offcials may not displace certain rules associated with criminal liability that are “so old and venerable,” “ `so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people[,] as to be ranked as fundamental.' ” Kahler v. Kansas, 589 U. S. 271, 279 (2020) (quoting Leland v. Oregon, 343 U. S. 790, 798 (1952)). The Fifth and Sixth Amendments require prosecutors and courts to observe various procedures before denying any person of his liberty, promising for example that every person enjoys the right to confront his accusers and have serious criminal charges resolved by a jury of his peers. One could go on.
But if many other constitutional provisions address what a government may criminalize and how it may go about securing a conviction, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition towns; the International Municipal Lawyers Association, the largest association of attorneys representing municipalities, counties, and special districts across the country; the District Attorneys of Sacramento and San Diego Counties, the California State Sheriffs' Association, the California Police Chiefs Association, and the Washington State Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs; California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed; and a group of 20 States: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
against “cruel and unusual punishments” focuses on what happens next. That Clause “has always been considered, and properly so, to be directed at the method or kind of punishment” a government may “impos[e] for the violation of criminal statutes.” Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514, 531–532 (1968) (plurality opinion).
We have previously discussed the Clause's origins and meaning. In the 18th century, English law still “formally tolerated” certain barbaric punishments like “disemboweling, quartering, public dissection, and burning alive,” even though those practices had by then “fallen into disuse.”
Bucklew v. Precythe, 587 U. S. 119, 130 (2019) (citing 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 370 (1769) (Blackstone)). The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause was adopted to ensure that the new Nation would never resort to any of those punishments or others like them. Punishments like those were “cruel” because they were calculated to “ `superad[d]' ” “ `terror, pain, or disgrace.' ” 587 U. S., at 130 (quoting 4 Blackstone 370). And they were “unusual” because, by the time of the Amendment's adoption, they had “long fallen out of use.” 587 U. S., at 130. Perhaps some of those who framed our Constitution thought, as Justice Story did, that a guarantee against those kinds of “atrocious” punishments would prove “unnecessary” because no “free government” would ever employ anything like them. 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1896, p. 750 (1833). But in adopting the Eighth Amendment, the framers took no chances.
All that would seem to make the Eighth Amendment a poor foundation on which to rest the kind of decree the plaintiffs seek in this case and the Ninth Circuit has endorsed since Martin. The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause focuses on the question what “method or kind of punishment” a government may impose after a criminal conviction, not on the question whether a government may criminalize particular behavior in the frst place or how it may go about securPage Proof Pending Publication ing a conviction for that offense. Powell, 392 U. S., at 531– 532. To the extent the Constitution speaks to those other matters, it does so, as we have seen, in other provisions. Nor, focusing on the criminal punishments Grants Pass imposes, can we say they qualify as cruel and unusual. Recall that, under the city's ordinances, an initial offense may trigger a civil fne. Repeat offenses may trigger an order temporarily barring an individual from camping in a public park. Only those who later violate an order like that may face a criminal punishment of up to 30 days in jail and a larger fne. See Part I–C, supra. None of the city's sanctions qualifes as cruel because none is designed to “superad[d]” “terror, pain, or disgrace.” Bucklew, 587 U. S., at 130 (internal quotation marks omitted). Nor are the city's sanctions unusual, because similar punishments have been and remain among “the usual mode[s]” for punishing offenses throughout the country. Pervear v. Commonwealth, 5 Wall. 475, 480 (1867); see 4 Blackstone 371–372; Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. 146, 165 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (describing fnes as “ `the drudge-horse of criminal justice, probably the most common form of punishment' ” (some internal quotation marks omitted)). In fact, large numbers of cities and States across the country have long employed, and today employ, similar punishments for similar offenses. See Part I–A, supra; Brief for Professor John F. Stinneford as Amicus Cu riae 7–13 (collecting historical and contemporary examples). Notably, neither the plaintiffs nor the dissent meaningfully contests any of this. See Brief for Respondents 40.4
B
Instead, the plaintiffs and the dissent pursue an entirely different theory. They do not question that, by its terms, 4This Court has never held that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause extends beyond criminal punishments to civil fnes and orders, see Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 666–668 (1977), nor does this case present any occasion to do so for none of the city's sanctions defy the Clause. Page Proof Pending Publication the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause speaks to the question what punishments may follow a criminal conviction, not to antecedent questions like what a State may criminalize or how it may go about securing a conviction. Yet, echoing the Ninth Circuit in Martin, they insist one notable exception exists.
In Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962), the plaintiffs and the dissent observe, this Court addressed a challenge to a criminal conviction under a California statute providing that “ `[n]o person shall . . . be addicted to the use of narcotics.' ” Ibid., n. 1. In response to that challenge, the Court invoked the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to hold that California could not enforce its law making “the `status' of narcotic addiction a criminal offense.” Id., at 666. The Court recognized that “imprisonment for ninety days is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual.” Id., at 667. But, the Court reasoned, when punishing “ `status,' ” “[e]ven one day in prison would be . . . cruel and unusual.” Id., at 666–667.
In doing so, the Court stressed the limits of its decision. It would have ruled differently, the Court said, if California had sought to convict the defendant for, say, the knowing or intentional “use of narcotics, for their purchase, sale, or possession, or for antisocial or disorderly behavior resulting from their administration.” Id., at 666. In fact, the Court took pains to emphasize that it did not mean to cast doubt on the States' “broad power” to prohibit behavior like that, even by those, like the defendant, who suffered from addiction. Id., at 664, 667–668. The only problem, as the Court saw it, was that California's law did not operate that way. Instead, it made the mere status of being an addict a crime. Id., at 666–667. And it was that feature of the law, the Court held, that went too far.
Reaching that conclusion under the banner of the Eighth Amendment may have come as a surprise to the litigants.
Mr. Robinson challenged his conviction principally on the Page Proof Pending Publication ground that it offended the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process of law. As he saw it, California's law violated due process because it purported to make unlawful a “status” rather than the commission of any “volitional act.” See Brief for Appellant in Robinson v. California, O. T. 1961, No. 61–554, p. 13 (Robinson Brief).
That framing may have made some sense. Our due process jurisprudence has long taken guidance from the “settled usage[s] . . . in England and in this country.” Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 528 (1884); see also Kahler, 589 U. S., at 279. And, historically, crimes in England and this country have usually required proof of some act (or actus reus) undertaken with some measure of volition (mens rea). At common law, “a complete crime” generally required “both a will and an act.” 4 Blackstone 21. This view “took deep and early root in American soil” where, to this day, a crime ordinarily arises “only from concurrence of an evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand.” Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 251–252 (1952). Measured against these standards, California's law was an anomaly, as it required proof of neither of those things.
Mr. Robinson's resort to the Eighth Amendment was comparatively brief. He referenced it only in passing, and only for the proposition that forcing a drug addict like himself to go “ `cold turkey' ” in a jail cell after conviction entailed such “intense mental and physical torment” that it was akin to “the burning of witches at the stake.” Robinson Brief 30. The State responded to that argument with barely a paragraph of analysis, Brief for Appellee in Robinson v. Califor nia, O. T. 1961, No. 61–554, pp. 22–23, and it received virtually no attention at oral argument. By almost every indication, then, Robinson was set to be a case about the scope of the Due Process Clause, or perhaps an Eighth Amendment case about whether forcing an addict to withdraw from drugs after conviction qualifed as cruel and unusual punishment.
Page Proof Pending Publication Of course, the case turned out differently. Bypassing Mr. Robinson's primary Due Process Clause argument, the Court charted its own course, reading the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to impose a limit not just on what punishments may follow a criminal conviction but what a State may criminalize to begin with. It was a view unprecedented in the history of the Court before 1962. In dissent, Justice White lamented that the majority had embraced an “application of `cruel and unusual punishment' so novel that” it could not possibly be “ascribe[d] to the Framers of the Constitution.” 370 U. S., at 689. Nor, in the 62 years since Robinson, has this Court once invoked it as authority to decline the enforcement of any criminal law, leaving the Eighth Amendment instead to perform its traditional function of addressing the punishments that follow a criminal conviction. Still, no one has asked us to reconsider Robinson. Nor do we see any need to do so today. Whatever its persuasive force as an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, it cannot sustain the Ninth Circuit's course since Martin. In Rob inson, the Court expressly recognized the “broad power” States enjoy over the substance of their criminal laws, stressing that they may criminalize knowing or intentional drug use even by those suffering from addiction. 370 U. S., at 664, 666. The Court held only that a State may not criminalize the “ `status' ” of being an addict. Id., at 666. In criminalizing a mere status, Robinson stressed, California had taken a historically anomalous approach toward criminal liability. One, in fact, this Court has not encountered since Robinson itself.
Public-camping ordinances like those before us are nothing like the law at issue in Robinson. Rather than criminalize mere status, Grants Pass forbids actions like “occupy[ing] a campsite” on public property “for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.” Grants Pass Municipal Code §§ 5.61.030, 5.61.010; App. to Pet. for Cert. 221a–222a.
Under the city's laws, it makes no difference whether the Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication charged defendant is homeless, a backpacker on vacation passing through town, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building. See Part I–C, supra; Blake v. Grants Pass, No. 1:18– cv–01823 (D Ore.), ECF Doc. 63–4, pp. 2, 16; Tr. of Oral Arg. 159. In that respect, the city's laws parallel those found in countless jurisdictions across the country. See Part I–A, supra. And because laws like these do not criminalize mere status, Robinson is not implicated.5
C
If Robinson does not control this case, the plaintiffs and the dissent argue, we should extend it so that it does. Perhaps a person does not violate ordinances like Grants Pass's simply by being homeless but only by engaging in certain acts (actus rei) with certain mental states (mentes reae). Still, the plaintiffs and the dissent insist, laws like these seek to regulate actions that are in some sense “involuntary,” for some homeless persons cannot help but do what the law forbids. See Brief for Respondents 24–25, 29, 32; post, at 578– 579 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). And, the plaintiffs and the dissent continue, we should extend Robinson to prohibit the enforcement of laws that operate this way—laws that don't proscribe status as such but that proscribe acts, even acts undertaken with some required mental state, the defendant cannot help but undertake. Post, at 578–579. To rule otherwise, the argument goes, would “ `effectively' ” allow cities to 5At times, the dissent seems to suggest, mistakenly, that laws like Grants Pass's apply only to the homeless. See post, at 575. That view fnds no support in the laws before us. Perhaps the dissent means to suggest that some cities selectively “enforce” their public-camping laws only against homeless persons. See post, at 579–581. But if that's the dissent's theory, it is not one that arises under the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Instead, if anything, it may implicate due process and our precedents regarding selective prosecution. See, e. g., United States v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456 (1996). No claim like that is before us in this case.
punish a person because of his status. Post, at 586. The Ninth Circuit pursued just this line of thinking below and in Martin.
The problem is, this Court has already rejected that view. In Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514 (1968), the Court confronted a defendant who had been convicted under a Texas statute making it a crime to “ `get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place.' ” Id., at 517 (plurality opinion). Like the plaintiffs here, Mr. Powell argued that his drunkenness was an “ `involuntary' ” byproduct of his status as an alcoholic. Id., at 533. Yes, the statute required proof of an act (becoming drunk or intoxicated and then proceeding into public), and perhaps some associated mental state (for presumably the defendant knew he was drinking and maybe even knew he made his way to a public place). Still, Mr. Powell contended, Texas's law effectively criminalized his status as an alcoholic because he could not help but doing as he did. Ibid. Justice Fortas embraced that view, but only in dissent: He would have extended Robinson to cover conduct that fows from any “condition [the defendant] is powerless to change.”
392 U. S., at 567 (Fortas, J., dissenting).
The Court did not agree. Writing for a plurality, Justice Marshall observed that Robinson had authorized “a very small” intrusion by courts “into the substantive criminal law” “under the aegis of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment[s] Clause.” 392 U. S., at 533. That small intrusion, Justice Marshall said, prevents States only from enforcing laws that criminalize “a mere status.” Id., at 532. It does nothing to curtail a State's authority to secure a conviction when “the accused has committed some act . . . society has an interest in preventing.” Id., at 533. That remains true, Justice Marshall continued, regardless whether the defendant's act “in some sense” might be described as “ `involun tary' or `occasioned by' ” a particular status. Ibid. (emphasis added). In this, Justice Marshall echoed Robinson itself, Page Proof Pending Publication where the Court emphasized that California remained free to criminalize intentional or knowing drug use even by addicts whose conduct, too, in some sense could be considered involuntary. See Robinson, 370 U. S., at 664, 666. Based on all this, Justice Marshall concluded, because the defendant before the Court had not been convicted “for being” an “alcoholic, but for [engaging in the act of] being in public while drunk on a particular occasion,” Robinson did not apply.
Powell, 392 U. S., at 532.6 This case is no different from Powell. Just as there, the plaintiffs here seek to expand Robinson's “small” intrusion “into the substantive criminal law.” Just as there, the plaintiffs here seek to extend its rule beyond laws addressing “mere status” to laws addressing actions that, even if undertaken with the requisite mens rea, might “in some sense” qualify as “ `involuntary.' ” And just as Powell could fnd nothing in the Eighth Amendment permitting that course, neither can we. As we have seen, Robinson already sits uneasily with the Amendment's terms, original meaning, and our precedents. Its holding is restricted to laws that criminalize “mere status.” Nothing in the decision called into question the “broad power” of States to regulate acts undertaken with some mens rea. And, just as in Powell, we dis6Justice White, who cast the ffth vote upholding the conviction, concurred in the result. Writing only for himself, Justice White expressed some sympathy for Justice Fortas's theory, but ultimately deemed that “novel construction” of the Eighth Amendment “unnecessary to pursue” because the defendant hadn't proven that his alcoholism made him “unable to stay off the streets on the night in question.” 392 U. S., at 552, n. 4, 553–554 (White, J., concurring in result). In Martin, the Ninth Circuit suggested Justice White's solo concurrence somehow rendered the Powell dissent controlling and the plurality a dissent. See Martin v. Boise, 920 F. 3d 584, 616–617 (2019). Before us, neither the plaintiffs nor the dissent defend that theory, and for good reason: In the years since Powell, this Court has repeatedly relied on Justice Marshall's opinion, as we do today. See, e.g., Kahler v. Kansas, 589 U. S. 271, 280 (2020); Clark v. Arizona, 548 U. S. 735, 768, n. 38 (2006); Jones v. United States, 463 U. S. 354, 365, n. 13 (1983).
Page Proof Pending Publication cern nothing in the Eighth Amendment that might provide us with lawful authority to extend Robinson beyond its narrow holding.
To be sure, and once more, a variety of other legal doctrines and constitutional provisions work to protect those in our criminal justice system from a conviction. Like some other jurisdictions, Oregon recognizes a “necessity” defense to certain criminal charges. It may be that defense extends to charges for illegal camping when it comes to those with nowhere else to go. See State v. Barrett, 302 Ore. App. 23, 28, 460 P. 3d 93, 96 (2020) (citing Ore. Rev. Stat. § 161.200). Insanity, diminished-capacity, and duress defenses also may be available in many jurisdictions. See Powell, 392 U. S., at 536. States and cities are free as well to add additional substantive protections. Since this litigation began, for example, Oregon itself has adopted a law specifcally addressing how far its municipalities may go in regulating public camping. See, e. g., Ore. Rev. Stat. § 195.530(2) (2023). For that matter, nothing in today's decision prevents States, cities, and counties from going a step further and declining to criminalize public camping altogether. For its part, the Constitution provides many additional limits on state prosecutorial power, promising fair notice of the laws and equal treatment under them, forbidding selective prosecutions, and much more besides. See Part II–A, supra; and n. 5, supra. All this represents only a small sample of the legion protections our society affords a presumptively free individual from a criminal conviction. But aside from Robinson, a case directed to a highly unusual law that condemned status alone, this Court has never invoked the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to perform that function.
D
Not only did Powell decline to extend Robinson to “involuntary” acts, it stressed the dangers that would likely attend any attempt to do so. Were the Court to pursue that path Page Proof Pending Publication in the name of the Eighth Amendment, Justice Marshall warned, “it is diffcult to see any limiting principle that would serve to prevent this Court from becoming . . . the ultimate arbiter of the standards of criminal responsibility, in diverse areas of the criminal law, throughout the country.” Powell, 392 U. S., at 533. After all, nothing in the Amendment's text or history exists to “confne” or guide our review. Id., at 534. Unaided by those sources, we would be left “to write into the Constitution” our own “formulas,” many of which would likely prove unworkable in practice. Id., at 537. Along the way, we would interfere with “essential considerations of federalism” that reserve to the States primary responsibility for drafting their own criminal laws. Id., at 535.
In particular, Justice Marshall observed, extending Robin son to cover involuntary acts would effectively “impe[l]” this Court “into defning” something akin to a new “insanity test in constitutional terms.” 392 U. S., at 536. It would because an individual like the defendant in Powell does not dispute that he has committed an otherwise criminal act with the requisite mens rea, yet he seeks to be excused from “moral accountability” because of his “ `condition.' ” Id., at 535–536. And “[n]othing,” Justice Marshall said, “could be less fruitful than for this Court” to try to resolve for the Nation profound questions like that under a provision of the Constitution that does not speak to them. Id., at 536. Instead, Justice Marshall reasoned, such matters are generally left to be resolved through “productive” democratic “dialogue” and “experimentation,” not by “freez[ing]” any particular, judicially preferred approach “into a rigid constitutional mold.” Id., at 537.
We recently reemphasized that last point in Kahler v. Kansas in the context of a Due Process Clause challenge.
Drawing on Justice Marshall's opinion in Powell, we acknowledged that “a state rule about criminal liability” may violate due process if it departs from a rule “so rooted in the Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication traditions” of this Nation that it might be said to “ran[k] as fundamental.” 589 U. S., at 279 (internal quotation marks omitted). But, we stressed, questions about whether an individual who has committed a proscribed act with the requisite mental state should be “reliev[ed of] responsibility,” id., at 283, due to a lack of “moral culpability,” id., at 286, are generally best resolved by the people and their elected representatives. Those are questions, we said, “of recurrent controversy” to which history supplies few “entrenched” answers, and on which the Constitution generally commands “no one view.” Id., at 296.
The Ninth Circuit's Martin experiment defed these lessons. Under Martin, judges take from elected representatives the questions whether and when someone who has committed a proscribed act with a requisite mental state should be “relieved of responsibility” for lack of “moral culpability.” 589 U. S., at 283, 286. And Martin exemplifes much of what can go wrong when courts try to resolve matters like those unmoored from any secure guidance in the Constitution.
Start with this problem. Under Martin, cities must allow public camping by those who are “involuntarily” homeless. 72 F. 4th, at 877 (citing Martin, 920 F. 3d, at 617, n. 8). But how are city offcials and law enforcement offcers to know what it means to be “involuntarily” homeless, or whether any particular person meets that standard? Posing the questions may be easy; answering them is not. Is it enough that a homeless person has turned down an offer of shelter? Or does it matter why? Cities routinely confront individuals who decline offers of shelter for any number of reasons, ranging from safety concerns to individual preferences. See Part I–A, supra. How are cities and their law enforcement offcers on the ground to know which of these reasons are suffciently weighty to qualify a person as “involuntarily” homeless?
If there are answers to those questions, they cannot be found in the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Nor do federal judges enjoy any special competence to provide them. Cities across the West report that the Ninth Circuit's ill-defned involuntariness test has proven “unworkable.”
Oregon Cities Brief 3; see Phoenix Brief 11. The test, they say, has left them “with little or no direction as to the scope of their authority in th[eir] day-to-day policing contacts,” California Sheriffs Brief 6, and under “threat of federal litigation . . . at all times and in all circumstances,” Oregon Cities Brief 6–7.
To be sure, Martin attempted to head off these complexities through some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic. The Ninth Circuit said a city needs to consider individuals “involuntarily” homeless (and thus entitled to camp on public property) only when the overall homeless population exceeds the total number of “adequate” and “practically available” shelter beds. See 920 F. 3d, at 617–618, and n. 8. But as sometimes happens with abstract rules created by those far from the front lines, that test has proven all but impossible to administer in practice.
City offcials report that it can be “monumentally diffcult” to keep an accurate accounting of those experiencing homelessness on any given day. Brief for City of Los Angeles as Amicus Curiae on Pet. for Cert. 14. Often, a city's homeless population “fuctuate[s] dramatically,” in part because homelessness is an inherently dynamic status. Brief for City of San Clemente as Amicus Curiae 16 (San Clemente Brief). While cities sometimes make rough estimates based on a single point-in-time count, they say it would be “impossibly expensive and diffcult” to undertake that effort with any regularity. Id., at 17. In Los Angeles, for example, it takes three days to count the homeless population block-byblock—even with the participation of thousands of volunteers. Martin, 920 F. 3d, at 595 (Smith, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).
Beyond these complexities, more await. Suppose even large cities could keep a running tally of their homeless citizens forevermore. And suppose further that they could Page Proof Pending Publication keep a live inventory of available shelter beds. Even so, cities face questions over which shelter beds count as “adequate” and “available” under Martin. Id., at 617, and n. 8. Rather than resolve the challenges associated with defning who qualifes as “involuntarily” homeless, these standards more nearly return us to them. Is a bed “available” to a smoker if the shelter requires residents to abstain from nicotine, as the shelter in Grants Pass does? 72 F. 4th, at 896; App. 39, Third Amended Complaint ¶13. Is a bed “available” to an atheist if the shelter includes “religious” messaging? 72 F. 4th, at 877. And how is a city to know whether the accommodations it provides will prove “adequate” in later litigation? 920 F. 3d, at 617, n. 8. Once more, a large number of cities in the Ninth Circuit tell us they have no way to be sure. See, e. g., Phoenix Brief 28; San Clemente Brief 8–12; Brief for City of Los Angeles as Amicus Curiae 22–23 (“What may be available, appropriate, or actually benefcial to one [homeless] person, might not be so to another”). Consider an example.
The city of Chico, California, thought it was complying with Martin when it constructed an outdoor shelter facility at its municipal airport to accommodate its homeless population. Warren v. Chico, 2021 WL 2894648, *3 (ED Cal., July 8, 2021). That shelter, we are told, included “protective fencing, large water totes, hand- washing stations, portable toilets, [and] a large canopy for shade.” Brief for City of Chico as Amicus Curiae on Pet.
for Cert. 16. Still, a district court enjoined the city from enforcing its public-camping ordinance. Why? Because, in that court's view, “appropriate” shelter requires “ `indoo[r],' ” not outdoor, spaces. Warren, 2021 WL 2894648, *3 (quoting Martin, 920 F. 3d, at 617). One federal court in Los Angeles ruled, during the COVID pandemic, that “adequate” shelter must also include nursing staff, testing for communicable diseases, and on-site security, among other things. See LA Al liance for Hum. Rights v. Los Angeles, 2020 WL 2512811, *4 (CD Cal., May 15, 2020). By imbuing the availability of shelPage Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication ter with constitutional signifcance in this way, many cities tell us, Martin and its progeny have “paralyzed” communities and prevented them from implementing even policies designed to help the homeless while remaining sensitive to the limits of their resources and the needs of other citizens. Cities Cert. Brief 4 (boldface and capitalization deleted). There are more problems still. The Ninth Circuit held that “involuntarily” homeless individuals cannot be punished for camping with materials “necessary to protect themselves from the elements.” 72 F. 4th, at 896. It suggested, too, that cities cannot proscribe “life-sustaining act[s]” that fow necessarily from homelessness. Id., at 921 (joint statement of Silver and Gould, JJ., regarding denial of rehearing). But how far does that go? The plaintiffs before us suggest a blanket is all that is required in Grants Pass. Brief for Respondents 14. But might a colder climate trigger a right to permanent tent encampments and fres for warmth? Because the contours of this judicial right are so “uncertai[n],” cities across the West have been left to guess whether Mar tin forbids their offcers from removing everything from tents to “portable heaters” on city sidewalks. Brief for City of Phoenix et al. on Pet. for Cert. 19, 29 (Phoenix Cert. Brief). There is uncertainty, as well, over whether Martin requires cities to tolerate other acts no less “attendant [to] survival” than sleeping, such as starting fres to cook food and “public urination [and] defecation.” Phoenix Cert. Brief 29–30; see also Mahoney v. Sacramento, 2020 WL 616302, *3 (ED Cal., Feb. 10, 2020) (indicating that “the [c]ity may not prosecute or otherwise penalize the [homeless] for eliminating in public if there is no alternative to doing so”). By extending Robinson beyond the narrow class of status crimes, the Ninth Circuit has created a right that has proven “impossible” for judges to delineate except “by fat.” Pow ell, 392 U. S., at 534.
Doubtless, the Ninth Circuit's intervention in Martin was well-intended. But since the trial court entered its injuncPage Proof Pending Publication tion against Grants Pass, the city shelter reports that utilization of its resources has fallen by roughly 40 percent. See Brief for Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission as Amicus Cu riae 4–5. Many other cities offer similar accounts about their experiences after Martin, telling us the decision has made it more diffcult, not less, to help the homeless accept shelter off city streets. See Part I–B, supra (recounting examples). Even when “policymakers would prefer to invest in more permanent” programs and policies designed to beneft homeless and other citizens, Martin has forced these “overwhelmed jurisdictions to concentrate public resources on temporary shelter beds.” Cities Brief 25; see Oregon Cities Brief 17–20; States Brief 16–17. As a result, cities report, Martin has undermined their efforts to balance conficting public needs and mired them in litigation at a time when the homelessness crisis calls for action. See States Brief 16–17.
All told, the Martin experiment is perhaps just what Justice Marshall anticipated ones like it would be. The Eighth Amendment provides no guidance to “confne” judges in deciding what conduct a State or city may or may not proscribe. Powell, 392 U. S., at 534. Instead of encouraging “productive dialogue” and “experimentation” through our democratic institutions, courts have frozen in place their own “formulas” by “fat.” Id., at 534, 537. Issued by federal courts removed from realities on the ground, those rules have produced confusion. And they have interfered with “essential considerations of federalism,” taking from the people and their elected leaders diffcult questions traditionally “thought to be the[ir] province.” Id., at 535–536.7 7The dissent suggests we cite selectively to the amici and “see only what [we] wan[t]” in their briefs. Post, at 586. In fact, all the States, cities, and counties listed above (n. 3, supra) asked us to review this case. Among them all, the dissent purports to identify just two public offcials and two cities that, according to the dissent, support its view. Post, at 586– 587. But even among that select group, the dissent overlooks the fact
E
Rather than address what we have actually said, the dissent accuses us of extending to local governments an “unfettered freedom to punish,” post, at 587, and stripping away any protections “the Constitution” has against “criminalizing sleeping,” post, at 567. “Either stay awake,” the dissent warns, “or be arrested.” Post, at 564. That is gravely mistaken. We hold nothing of the sort. As we have stressed, cities and States are not bound to adopt public-camping laws. They may also choose to narrow such laws (as Oregon itself has recently). Beyond all that, many substantive legal protections and provisions of the Constitution may have important roles to play when States and cities seek to enforce their laws against the homeless. See Parts II–A, II–C, supra.
The only question we face is whether one specifc provision of the Constitution—the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment—prohibits the enforcement of public-camping laws.
Nor does the dissent meaningfully engage with the reasons we have offered for our conclusion on that question. It claims that we “gratuitously” treat Robinson “as an outlier.” Post, at 574, and n. 2. But the dissent does not dispute that the law Robinson faced was an anomaly, punishing mere status. The dissent does not dispute that Robinson's decision to address that law under the rubric of the Eighth Amend- that each expresses strong dissatisfaction with how Martin has been applied in practice. See San Francisco Brief 15, 26 (“[T]he Ninth Circuit and its lower courts have repeatedly misapplied and overextended the Eighth Amendment” and “hamstrung San Francisco's balanced approach to addressing the homelessness crisis”); Brief for City of Los Angeles as Amicus Curiae 6 (“[T]he sweeping rationale in Martin . . . calls into question whether cities can enforce public health and safety laws”); California Governor Brief 3 (“In the wake of Martin, lower courts have blocked efforts to clear encampments while micromanaging what qualifes as a suitable offer of shelter”). And for all the reasons we have explored and so many other cities have suggested, we see no principled basis under the Eighth Amendment for federal judges to administer anything like Martin. Page Proof Pending Publication ment is itself hard to square with the Amendment's text and this Court's other precedents interpreting it. And the dissent all but ignores Robinson's own insistence that a different result would have obtained in that case if the law there had proscribed an act rather than status alone.
Tellingly, too, the dissent barely mentions Justice Mar- shall's opinion in Powell. There, reasoning exactly as we do today, Justice Marshall refused to extend Robinson to actions undertaken, “in some sense, `involuntar[ily].' ” 392 U. S., at 533. Rather than confront any of this, the dissent brusquely calls Powell a “strawman” and seeks to distinguish it on the inscrutable ground that Grants Pass penalizes “status[-defining]” (rather than “involuntary”) conduct.
Post, at 584–585. But whatever that might mean, it is no answer to the reasoning Justice Marshall offered, to its obvious relevance here, or to the fact this Court has since endorsed Justice Marshall's reasoning as correct in cases like Kahler and Jones, cases that go undiscussed in the dissent. See n. 6, supra. The only extraordinary result we might reach in this case is one that would defy Powell, ignore the historical reach of the Eighth Amendment, and transform Robinson's narrow holding addressing a peculiar law punishing status alone into a new rule that would bar the enforcement of laws that are, as the dissent puts it, “ `pervasive' ” throughout the country. Post, at 577; Part I–A, supra.
To be sure, the dissent seeks to portray the new rule it advocates as a modest, “limited,” and “narrow” one addressing only those who wish to fulfll a “biological necessity” and “keep warm outside with a blanket” when they have no other “adequate” place “to go.” Post, at 563, 567, 572, 583–584, 586. But that reply blinks the diffcult questions that necessarily follow and the Ninth Circuit has been forced to confront: What does it mean to be “involuntarily” homeless with “no place to go”? What kind of “adequate” shelter must a city provide to avoid being forced to allow people to camp in its parks and on its sidewalks? And what are people entitled to do and use Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication in public spaces to “keep warm” and fulfll other “biological necessities”? 8 Those unavoidable questions have plunged courts and cities across the Ninth Circuit into waves of litigation. And without anything in the Eighth Amendment to guide them, any answers federal judges can offer (and have offered) come, as Justice Marshall foresaw, only by way of “fat.” Powell, 392 U. S., at 534. The dissent cannot escape that hard truth. Nor can it escape the fact that, far from narrowing Martin, it would expand its experiment from one circuit to the entire country—a development without any precedent in this Court's history. One that would authorize federal judges to freeze into place their own rules on matters long “thought to be the province” of state and local leaders, 392 U. S., at 536, and one that would deny communities the “wide lati8The dissent brushes aside these questions, declaring that “available answers” exist in the decisions below. Post, at 584. But the dissent misses the point. The problem, as Justice Marshall discussed, is not that it is impossible for someone to dictate answers to these questions. The problem is that nothing in the Eighth Amendment gives federal judges the authority or guidance they need to answer them in a principled way. Take just two examples. First, the dissent says, a city seeking to ban camping must provide “adequate” shelter for those with “no place to go.” Post, at 583–584. But it never says what qualifes as “adequate” shelter. Ibid. And, as we have seen, cities and courts across the Ninth Circuit have struggled mightily with that question, all with nothing in the Eighth Amendment to guide their work. Second, the dissent seems to think that, if a city lacks enough “adequate” shelter, it must permit “ `bedding' ” in public spaces, but not campfres, tents, or “ `public urination or defecation.' ” Post, at 576, 583–584, 586. But where does that rule come from, the federal register? See post, at 584. After Martin, again as we have seen, many courts have taken a very different view. The dissent never explains why it disagrees with those courts. Instead, it merely quotes the district court's opinion in this case that announced a rule it seems the dissent happens to prefer. By elevating Martin over our own precedents and the Constitution's original public meaning, the dissent faces diffcult choices that cannot be swept under the rug—ones that it can resolve not by anything found in the Eighth Amendment, only by fat.
tude” and “fexibility” even the dissent acknowledges they need to address the homelessness crisis, post, at 564, 567.
III
Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not. Almost 200 years ago, a visitor to this country remarked upon the “extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it.” 2 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 129 (H. Reeve transl. 1961). If the multitude of amicus briefs before us proves one thing, it is that the American people are still at it. Through their voluntary associations and charities, their elected representatives and appointed offcials, their police offcers and mental- health professionals, they display that same energy and skill today in their efforts to address the complexities of the homelessness challenge facing the most vulnerable among us. Yes, people will disagree over which policy responses are best; they may experiment with one set of approaches only to fnd later another set works better; they may fnd certain responses more appropriate for some communities than others. But in our democracy, that is their right. Nor can a handful of federal judges begin to “match” the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding “how best to handle” a pressing social question like homelessness. Rob inson, 370 U. S., at 689 (White, J., dissenting). The Constitution's Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation's homelessness policy. The Page Proof Pending Publication judgment below is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.