The ruling is a win for the small southern Oregon town, which challenged a 2018 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that granted protections throughout much of the Western United States for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
“Oregon should be allowed to experiment with different solutions and that’s really up to the people of Oregon to decide what they think is the best solution here,” said Theane Evangelis, an attorney for Grants Pass who argued the case before the court earlier this year. “We think that camping laws like those in Grants Pass are reasonable. Cities across the country rely on them.”