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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
Cities can’t prosecute for sleeping on streets
Appeals court
sides with the
homeless
By REBECCA BOONE
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — Cit-
ies can’t prosecute people
for sleeping on the streets if
they have nowhere else to go
because it amounts to cruel
and unusual punishment, a
federal appeals court said
Tuesday.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals sided with six
homeless Boise, Idaho, res-
idents who sued the city in
2009 over a local ordinance
that banned sleeping in public
spaces. The ruling could affect
several other cities across the
West that have similar laws.
It comes as many places
across the West Coast are
struggling with homelessness
brought on by rising housing
costs and income inequality.
When the Boise lawsuit
was filed, attorneys for the
homeless residents said as
many as 4,500 people didn’t
have a place to sleep in Ida-
ho’s capital city and only
about 700 available beds or
mats were in homeless shel-
ters. The case bounced back
and forth in the courts for
years, and Boise modified its
rules in 2014 to say homeless
residents couldn’t be prose-
cuted for sleeping outside on
nights when the local shelters
were full.
But that didn’t solve the
Adam Cotterell/Boise State Public Radio
The entrance to an alley known as Cooper Court, a homeless camp in Boise, Idaho.
problem, the attorneys said,
because Boise’s shelters limit
the number of days that home-
less residents can stay. Two of
the city’s three shelters require
some form of religious par-
ticipation for some programs,
making those shelters unsuit-
able for people with different
beliefs, the homeless residents
said.
The three-judge panel for
the 9th Circuit found that the
shelter rules meant homeless
people would still be at risk
of prosecution even on days
when beds were left open. The
judges also said the religious
programming woven into
some shelter programs was a
problem.
“A city cannot, via the
threat of prosecution, coerce
an individual to attend reli-
gion-based treatment pro-
grams consistently with the
Establishment Clause of the
First Amendment,” Judge
Marsha Berzon wrote.
The biggest issue was that
the city’s rule violated the
U.S. Constitution’s Eighth
Amendment against cruel and
unusual punishment, the court
found.
Berzon wrote that in
essence, the Eighth Amend-
ment does three things: It lim-
its the type of punishment
the government can impose,
it prohibits punishments that
are grossly disproportionate to
the severity of the crime, and
it limits what the government
can criminalize.
That third limitation is per-
tinent in the Boise case, Ber-
zon wrote.
“As a result, just as the state
may not criminalize the state
of being ‘homeless in pub-
lic places,’ the state may not
‘criminalize conduct that is an
unavoidable consequence of
being homeless — namely sit-
ting, lying, or sleeping on the
streets,’” Berzon wrote.
Major opioid maker to pay for
overdose-antidote development
A low-cost
nasal spray
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press
A company whose pre-
scription opioid marketing
practices are being blamed
for sparking the addiction and
overdose crisis says it’s help-
ing to fund an effort to make a
lower-cost overdose antidote.
OxyContin maker Pur-
due Pharma announced today
that it’s making a $3.4 million
grant to Harm Reduction Ther-
apeutics, a Pittsburgh-based
nonprofit, to help develop a
low-cost naloxone nasal spray.
The announcement comes
as lawsuits from local govern-
ments blaming Purdue, based
in Stamford, Connecticut, and
other companies in the drug
industry for using deceptive
marketing practices to encour-
age heavy prescribing of the
powerful and addictive pain-
killers. Last week, the number
of lawsuits against the indus-
try being overseen by a federal
judge topped 1,000.
The
Cleveland-based
judge, Dan Polster, is pushing
the industry to settle with the
plaintiffs — mostly local gov-
ernments and Native Amer-
ican tribes — and with state
governments, most of which
have sued in state court or are
conducting a joint investiga-
tion. Hundreds of other local
governments are also suing in
state courts across the country.
The sides have had regu-
lar settlement discussions, but
it’s not clear when a deal might
be struck in the case, which is
complicated by the number of
parties and questions on how
to assign blame.
AP Photo/Douglas Healey
Purdue Pharma, whose prescription opioid marketing
practices are being blamed for sparking a nationwide
overdose and addiction crisis, says it’s helping to fund an
effort to make a lower-cost overdose antidote.
‘This grant is one example
of the meaningful steps
Purdue is taking to help
address opioid abuse
in our communities.’
Purdue President and CEO Craig Landau
The Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention
reported that drug overdoses
killed a record 72,000 Ameri-
cans last year. The majority of
the deaths involved opioids.
But a growing number of them
are from illicit synthetic drugs,
including fentanyl, rather than
prescription opioids such as
OxyContin or Vicodin.
Governments are asking
for changes in how opioids are
marketed, and for help pay-
ing for treatment and the costs
of ambulance runs, child wel-
fare systems, jails and other
expenses associated with the
opioid crisis.
Polster is expected to rule in
the coming weeks on motions
from drugmakers, distribu-
tors and pharmacies to dis-
miss the claims. Trials in some
of the cases — being used to
test issues common to many of
them — are now scheduled to
begin in September 2019.
Purdue agreed to pay $634
million in fines back in 2007
to settle charges that the com-
pany downplayed the risk
of addiction and abuse of its
blockbuster painkiller Oxy-
Contin starting in the 1990s.
It’s facing similar accusa-
tions again.
Earlier this year, the pri-
vately held company stopped
marketing OxyContin to
doctors.
The naloxone grant is a
way the company can show it’s
trying to help stem the damage
done by opioids. “This grant is
one example of the meaningful
steps Purdue is taking to help
address opioid abuse in our
communities,” Purdue Presi-
dent and CEO Craig Landau
said in a statement.
Naloxone is seen as one
major piece in overdose pre-
vention strategies. Over the
past several years, most states
have eased access to the anti-
dote for laypeople. First
responders, drug users and
others have taken to carrying
naloxone to reverse overdoses.
But the price of the drug has
been a problem for state and
local governments.
Pittsburgh-based
Harm
Reduction Therapeutics says
it is trying to get its version to
the market within two years.
“Combating the ongoing
crisis of opioid addiction will
require innovative approaches
to both prevention and med-
ication-assisted treatment,”
Harm Reduction co-founder
and CEO Michael Hufford
said in a statement, “but it all
starts with making sure lives
are not lost from overdose.”
Welcome Back to Church
Sunday & Street Picnic
In other words, as long as
there isn’t an option for sleep-
ing indoors, the government
can’t criminalize homeless
people for sleeping outside,
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Any
the court found.
Neither attorneys for the
homeless residents nor for
the city immediately returned
calls seeking comment.
Other cities have faced
similar lawsuits, with varying
results.
In 2007, the 9th Circuit
ruled in favor of homeless res-
idents of Los Angeles, finding
that as long as there are more
homeless residents than there
are shelter beds, a law out-
lawing sleeping outside was
unconstitutional. Both sides
later reached an agreement
and the entire case was even-
tually thrown out.
In 2009, a federal judge
said a Portland policy designed
to prevent people from sitting
or lying on public sidewalks
was unconstitutional. Port-
land officials now must also
give campers at least 24 hours’
notice before cleaning up or
moving unsanctioned camps.
A state judge rejected a
similar anti-camping law in
Everett, Washington.
Associated Press reporter
Phuong Le contributed to this
story from Seattle.
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