In 2018, the Oregon Law Center filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Debra Blake, a woman who’d been homeless in Grants Pass for nearly a decade and accumulated more than $5,000 in fines for sleeping in public. After Blake died in 2021, Gloria Johnson and John Logan, another homeless resident, stepped in as the named representatives in the class action.
The lawsuit argued that fines and jail time violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because people involuntarily experiencing homelessness have nowhere to sleep but public spaces. Grants Pass, a small city located in southern Oregon, has just a few homeless shelter options that fall
→ Continue reading at Crosscut
