When Sleeping Became a Crime: The Boise Case That Changed Homelessness Law

The plaintiffs didn't look like typical civil rights litigants. They were six men and women who had spent years cycling through Boise's shelters, streets, and jail cells — people like Robert Martin, a Vietnam veteran who slept under a bridge because the city's only emergency shelter required religious attendance and turned people away when full. Their lawsuit, filed in 2009, asked a simple question: can a city punish someone for the biological necessity of sleep when it provides no legal place to do it?

The Ordinance and the Reality

Boise's municipal code made it a crime to "camp" or "disorderly conduct" in public, defining camping as using any temporary shelter — a blanket, cardboard, a tent — for sleeping. Violations carried fines up to $100 and possible jail time. By 2009, the city had three shelters with roughly 300 beds total for a homeless population estimated at over 1,500. Two were faith-based programs that mandated chapel attendance; the third, a rescue mission, required sobriety and curfew compliance. On any given night, dozens were turned away.

Police enforced the ordinances aggressively. Between 2007 and 2009, officers issued more than 600 citations for sleeping or camping in public. Those who couldn't pay fines — which was nearly all of them — faced arrest warrants. A bench warrant meant that any subsequent police contact, even for a minor traffic stop, could land them in jail. Martin himself had been cited repeatedly, jailed for unpaid fines, and released back to the same bridge with no more options than before.

The Legal Argument

The plaintiffs' attorneys from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty built their case on a 1962 Supreme Court precedent, Robinson v. California, which held that California could not criminalize the status of being a drug addict. The logic: addiction is an illness, a condition, not an act. Punishing the status itself violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

They argued that homelessness, like addiction, is a condition — one involuntarily imposed by economic forces, disability, and the simple arithmetic of too few shelter beds. Sleeping is not a voluntary act for someone without shelter; it is a biological imperative. To criminalize that imperative when no alternative exists is to punish the status of being homeless.

The city countered that its ordinances targeted conduct, not status. Sleeping in a park is an action, the city argued, and cities have broad police powers to regulate public space for health and safety. The district court agreed with Boise and dismissed the case.

The Ninth Circuit's Reversal

In 2018, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed unanimously. Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the court, held that "as long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter."

The ruling was narrow but groundbreaking. It did not declare a right to sleep anywhere, nor did it invalidate all anti-camping laws. It said only that the Eighth Amendment forbids enforcing such laws against people who have no access to shelter. The court remanded for the district court to determine whether Boise's shelter capacity was truly insufficient on the nights citations were issued.

The decision sent shockwaves through municipal governments across the nine western states under the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction. Cities from San Francisco to Seattle, Portland to Phoenix, suddenly faced a new legal constraint: they could not clear encampments or ticket people for sleeping outside unless they could prove adequate shelter existed.

The Aftermath and the Limits

Boise petitioned the Supreme Court for review. In 2019, the Court denied certiorari, letting the Ninth Circuit's ruling stand. But the decision's practical impact has been uneven. Some cities, like San Francisco, scaled back enforcement and invested in more shelter beds. Others adopted "navigation centers" — low-barrier shelters with fewer rules — to meet the Martin standard. A few simply ignored the ruling, banking on the difficulty of proving shelter unavailability in court.

The ruling created a new evidentiary burden for homeless defendants. To avoid a citation, they must now show that no shelter bed was available on that specific night — a fact that requires testimony from shelter operators, city officials, and social service agencies. For someone living on the street, assembling that proof is nearly impossible without a lawyer.

Cities also exploited a loophole: the ruling only applies when no shelter is available. If even one bed sits empty, the ordinance can be enforced. This led to perverse incentives — some shelters began keeping a single bed "open" on paper while turning people away for rule violations, preserving the city's ability to ticket.

A Precedent That Endures

Five years after Martin, the case remains the most significant constitutional constraint on homelessness criminalization in the United States. It has been cited in dozens of federal and state cases, cited by the Department of Justice in statements of interest, and invoked in policy debates from Honolulu to Denver. Yet the core problem persists: the gap between shelter capacity and human need has only widened. In 2023, a one-night count found over 650,000 people homeless nationwide — a record high.

The Martin plaintiffs won a legal principle, not a solution. Robert Martin died in 2019, still waiting for a permanent home. The bridge where he slept is now fenced off. But the precedent he helped establish — that the Constitution has something to say about punishing people for being poor enough to have nowhere else to go — remains the law in the West, a fragile shield against the criminalization of survival.

This is one episode in a much longer story. For the full account of the legal history of poverty relief and punishment, read “Poor Laws and Public Justice: Legal Histories of Poverty Relief and Punishment” by Jean Turner on MixCache.com.