Los Angeles — Today, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto announced that her office, on behalf of the City of Los Angeles, has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark federal case from Oregon, seeking judicial clarity on the regulation of shared public spaces. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson, on April 22, and a ruling is expected by the end of June. In September, Feldstein Soto submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review this case.
The brief does not support efforts to criminalize people experiencing homelessness but, instead seeks clarity on the City’s ability to regulate shared public spaces. The brief focuses on the broad, inconsistent language that will make it more difficult for the City of Los Angeles to enforce regulations designed to balance the rights of people experiencing homelessness with the need to keep public spaces, especially sensitive public spaces such as schools, safe, clean and accessible to all. The City has a significant interest in obtaining judicial clarity on an issue affecting Los Angeles residents, both housed and unhoused and in defending its own ordinances. The brief makes clear the City’s priority is to bring unhoused people inside until everyone has a safe place to sleep.
You can read the brief here: Brief of City of Los Angeles as Amicus Curiae in Support of Neither Party