Los Angeles won't quit
on arrests of homeless people
Prolonging a legal battle over how far cities can go in dealing with homelessness, Los Angeles will petition a federal appeals court to overturn an earlier court ruling striking down an ordinance which bars people from sitting, lying or sleeping on public streets and sidewalks.A panel of 9th Circuit judges ruled 2-1 last month that the city's ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by criminalizing people forced to sleep outdoors because of a lack of available shelter beds. See previous post here.
"We're disappointed the council has decided to continue criminalizing the homeless," said Ramona Ripston of the ACLU of Southern California. "It is the worst ordinance in the country and needs to be rewritten. It is not humane or constitutional. The city should be ashamed of itself."
Read the Daily News story here and the Daily Breeze story here.
posted by Jacqueline Dowd @ 6:08 PM
1 Comments:
That's too sad. What gives humans the right to not allow other humans a place to live and to sleep? Someone decides that they own land, and creates this terrible system. Illegal immigrants in California have fought and gained legal human rights to health care (paid by legal citizens/tax payer dollars), yet a homeless citizen is excepted to never sit, never sleep. The jails are over crowded and I think they should concentrate on getting the gang people from Mexico out of the country. They thrive on making illegal money peddling drugs which in turn often creates the homeless person's position, being "hooked".
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