A Christian ministry urged the Supreme Court to criminalize homelessness

While several religious groups urged SCOTUS to have compassion, Gospel Rescue Mission took the path of cruelty

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard a case that centers around how cities should deal with homelessness. One of the most striking revelations, however, may have come from a Christian ministry that insisted the homeless need to be converted or punished.

The case involved the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, where there are more homeless people than available beds in shelters. City leaders have chosen to address the problem, not by building affordable housing or additional shelters but rather by fining people hundreds of dollars for using blankets, pillows, or cardboard boxes on the streets. When homeless people accrue multiple fines, they can be banned from public property… literally leaving them with nowhere to go. And if they remain in the city, they can be criminally prosecuted.

A previous legal case already declared those kinds of penalties unconstitutional, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. So with the help of an attorney, a group of homeless people in Grants Pass filed a lawsuit against the city, saying local ordinances that punished them for basically existing were illegal. After all, they said, they weren’t choosing to live on the streets. There were no other options available to them.

Despite winning their case in lower courts, the city repeatedly appealed the decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court. The question in front of the justices is whether the city should be allowed to criminalize homelessness. It would be a disaster—and just another layer of cruelty—if SCOTUS rules in favor of Grants Pass.

Before getting into the oral arguments, though, it’s important to recognize that the plaintiffs aren’t kidding about the lack of options available to them.

According to legal briefs, the homeless people only have four options in the city. They can stay at a “sobering center” meant for intoxicated people... which has 12 rooms but no beds. There’s a youth shelter where minors ages 10-17 can stay for up to three days (or more with parental consent). There’s a “warming shelter” that can hold 40 people in freezing weather… but also has no beds.

And then there’s a homeless shelter run by Gospel Rescue Mission.

Gospel Rescue Mission (screenshot via Google Maps)

GRM is a Christian ministry that requires all residents to work for them without pay for “six hours a day, six days a week in exchange for a bunk for 30 days.” They also cannot look for outside work during that month. That’s not all though. They must also attend church every Sunday (from a pre-approved list); Unitarian services are not acceptable. And they have to attend a chapel service twice a day. And they can’t smoke or drink. And they can’t have sex during their stay.

What if you’re disabled or have medical or mental health problems that prevent you from attending church? What if you aren’t Christian? What if you just don’t want to participate in the religious activities? Too bad. You can’t stay at their shelter.

That’s why the plaintiffs argued they had no realistic options in the city.

In cases like these, it’s always interesting to see which groups are filing amicus briefs, making on argument for why the justices should rule one way or the other.

Just looking at religious ministries alone, there’s an incredible number on the side of the homeless. They include the Oregon Quakers; the Los Angeles Catholic Worker; the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Hindus for Human Rights; and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice.

Writing at Religion News Service, Kevin Nye spoke to leaders of those groups who told him things like, “Criminalizing, exploiting, and hurting poor and unhoused people is an affront to God and to Christianity itself, and to other religious traditions themselves.” The Kairos Center brief explained that “punishing poor and homeless people for the effects of their poverty and homelessness fails to honor the holy nature of creation, and thereby fails society as a whole.” Even the normally arch-conservative USCCB argued that the “Catholic Church, consistent with western tradition, has long taught that the homeless are to be helped, not punished.”

Who could possibly be on the other side of the issue?

Well, that would be Gospel Rescue Mission, the ministry that controls the discriminatory shelter in Grants Pass.

In their brief supporting the city, they argued that the city’s inability to punish the homeless (because of earlier court decisions) “has significantly decreased the number of people who access the Mission’s services,” as if that’s a bad thing.

Municipal public safety laws are a crucial tool in helping the homeless take advantage of available safe shelter resources. Taking away cities’ power to enforce those laws, as the Ninth Circuit has done here, does not benefit the homeless as that court evidently hoped. Instead, it has only hindered the efforts of those in Grants Pass who devote each day to bettering the lives of those facing homelessness.

They’re calling for the city to fine and jail the homeless in the hopes that they become the only alternative for anyone seeking to avoid punishment. When you see yourself as the antidote, you start to root for poison.

It’s telling that there’s literally zero mention of “God” anywhere in the brief—which is rather unusual for a Christian group making an argument to the Supreme Court. Especially this Supreme Court. The argument isn’t a religious one because how could it be? The ministry says they have beds available, but for various reasons, many of them are going unused. They must know how bad it would look to justify the cruelty against the homeless using the language of faith. Yet they seem blissfully unaware of how their own religious restrictions may play a significant role in why people with no other options still don’t want to ask them for help.

It also raises additional questions, as Nye writes:

It may be well-intentioned, but GRM’s plea raises serious legal and theological questions. If the Rescue Mission—the only option in town—can shelter just 138 people, how can the government criminalize all 1,200 people experiencing homelessness in the city? Do Christian organizations have a theological mandate, or even a justification, for forcing religious programming in exchange for shelter and care? Can the government compel homeless people to stay at a shelter that has strict religious requirements without infringing further on their constitutional rights?

The Christian shelter isn’t, and cannot be, the city’s only viable option here. The long-term solutions have to involve mental health care, addiction specialists, affordable housing, and secular shelters, not just banishing people from the city. But right now, the city isn’t giving homeless people secular, safe places to stay. Instead, Grants Pass is arguing that the options provided are more than enough and the only alternative is to further punish people who are already struggling to survive, making it that much harder for them to get back up on their feet.

It’s completely insane logic. And the one Christian ministry directly involved in the case is going all in on the side of More Cruelty.

If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that the oral arguments didn’t appear to be a slam dunk for the city of Grants Pass. They will win, of course, since this right-wing SCOTUS isn’t about to rule on the side of victims. But legal analysts seem to think the conservatives may limit the damage in various ways. We can only hope.

For once, though, it would be nice if the justices listened to religious groups making sensible, albeit faith-based, arguments for why criminalizing homelessness would only make a bad situation worse.

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