Arguments made by federal officials in Idaho against a ban on sleeping or camping in public places echoes arguments made previously by the ACLU in Colorado, which said municipal camping bans criminalize the homeless.
In recent years, several Front Range cities, including Denver, Colorado Springs and Boulder, have enacted camping bans and other such ordinances.
In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado sued Boulder on behalf of a client in a “no camping lawsuit.”
The ACLU lost the suit, and the state declined to hear an appeal in the case.
But an argument made by the ACLU of Colorado has resurfaced in the Department of Justice statement in support of homeless advocates in Boise, said Mark Silverstein, ACLU’s legal director in Colorado.
“It means the justice department wants to be heard with a view of the law as it applies to laws that criminalize what homeless people need to do to survive,” Silverstein said.
The ACLU and DOJ agree that when homeless shelters are full, it leaves the homeless little choice.
“When adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public,” the DOJ statement said. “If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.”
Sarah Huntley, a Boulder spokeswoman, said the anti-camping ordinance applies to everyone, not only the homeless.
“The ordinance the city has in place currently is often perceived as an ordinance that targets or is geared toward the homeless,” Huntley said. “It is written in a way that is actually designed to deal with troubling behavior” whether or not the person in question is homeless.
“We are very cognizant about creating rules or regulations that might apply to a certain segment of our population,” she said.
Amber Miller, spokesman for Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, echoed Boulder’s statement, saying the ordinance applies to everyone, not just the homeless. She said the city will be following the progress of the Idaho case.
In a news release Thursday, the Western Regional Advocacy Project and Denver Homeless Out Loud supported the DOJ statement and said the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Idaho was “filed by homeless people who say that laws which penalize people for sleeping outdoors effectively make it illegal to be homeless.”
