Neil Gorsuch, Associate Injustice of the Supreme Court, read Anatole France without ever considering the possibility that he was snarkily trolling the economic elite of his day when he wrote:
La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
My own translation, which is not the most common wording, is this:
The majestic equality of the law, which forbids to the rich as to the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Today in Grants Pass v. Johnson, SCOTUS ruled in a Gorsuch-authored opinion,
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.” Under the city’s laws, it makes no difference whether the 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. [reference omitted]
Gorsuch shares the words of France, but none of the understanding.
Tragically, he reasons this way in order to get around a rarely used precedent from the 1960s which forbids making status alone a crime. That case, Robinson v. California, used the 8th Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishments to invalidate a law that criminalized being addicted rather than the buying, selling, or using of specific drugs. The parallel here is strong but imperfect: an overt act has taken place, “occupying a campsite on public property,” to use the Injustice’s words. The court has at other times noted that the 8th amendment at the time of the founding wasn’t thought to prevent the criminalization of any particular thing, only particularly cruel punishments (a list of which the court appears at times to think cannot be expanded, as if no new cruelty could ever be devised not present in 18th century England).
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeal did make things uncomfortable for SCOTUS by not invalidating the law, only the imposition of fines for sleeping outdoors on public property, and not in all cases, but only when the number of homeless in an area exceeds available shelter beds. Even so, the rhetorical contempt from Gorsuch and his conservative peers was unnecessary. They could have retreated to a limited view of the 8th protections and distinguish the law on the basis that a fine is different from a torture device like thumbscrews, even when it is a fine one cannot afford.
This leaves us with the irony that these contemptible Bluetooth assgadgets, well read and yet entirely without wit or empathy, added to the substance of their ruling some truly unnecessary cruelty.
Expand. The. Court.
They know they have the power to play in our faces. It's just fun for them.
Let's punish his enablers and pals this fall and give them a defeat they'll never forget. I'm fired up and ready to go.