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Dear Friend,
More and more Americans are living one crisis away from homelessness.

One missed paycheck. One medical emergency. One rent increase. One job loss. One family breakdown. One disaster.

For millions of people, the distance between making ends meet and having nowhere safe to sleep is shrinking fast.

Housing costs are soaring. Wages are not keeping pace. Rents, groceries, insurance, utilities, medical bills and debt are pushing working families, seniors, veterans, young adults and people with disabilities closer to the edge.

That is what makes Louisiana’s House Bill 211 so dangerous. ([link removed])

Rather than treating homelessness as a warning sign of a deepening economic crisis, HB 211 treats visible poverty as a crime.

The so-called “Streets to Success Act” would create a new crime of “unauthorized camping on public property,” punishable by a fine of up to $500, up to six months in jail, or both.

In other words, a person with nowhere else to sleep could be arrested, prosecuted, fined, jailed, placed under court supervision, pushed into court-ordered treatment, and required to pay or work for that treatment and supervision.

That is not compassion. That is not public safety.

That is government using the criminal justice system to manage the fallout from a broken economy.

The Rutherford Institute has urged Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry to reject HB 211 and return it to the Legislature with recommendations for a homelessness response that is prevention-centered, service-based, constitutionally sound, and grounded in human dignity rather than criminal punishment.

The bill is presented as a way to reduce homelessness, substance abuse, untreated mental illness, and recidivism. Those are urgent concerns.

But HB 211 does not make housing, treatment, job training, mental-health care, or disability assistance broadly available to people before they are arrested. Instead, it embeds those services inside the criminal justice system, and it pressures defendants to plead guilty and waive a trial even if they are innocent.

To access the bill’s Homelessness Court program, an unhoused person must first enter the criminal process. Participation can require a guilty plea, waiver of trial rights, at least twelve months of supervision, court-ordered conditions, testing at personal expense unless deemed indigent, and the threat of revocation and incarceration for noncompliance.

This turns arrest into the gateway to help.

For people already struggling to survive, that gateway can quickly become a trap: court debt, criminal records, probation obligations, missed hearings, lost property, lost medication, lost identification, and further displacement.

This should concern everyone.

MAKE THE GOVERNMENT PLAY BY THE RULES OF THE CONSTITUTION: SUPPORT THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM ([link removed])

Once government accepts the premise that poverty can be treated as a crime, the danger does not stop with those already sleeping outside. It threatens anyone who falls through the cracks of an increasingly unforgiving economy.

Today it is the person sleeping in a tent.

Tomorrow it could be the worker living in a car, the veteran priced out of housing, the senior unable to afford rent, the family evicted after a medical crisis, or the protester whose presence in a public space becomes inconvenient to those in power.

The Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson may have given governments more leeway under the Eighth Amendment to enforce certain anti-camping laws, but it did not require states to criminalize homelessness. Nor did it give states a blank check to turn poverty into a pathway into jail, debt, probation, or court-ordered treatment.

Louisiana can protect public health and public spaces without punishing people for being too poor to afford shelter.

A constitutional and humane response would prioritize voluntary services before arrest; emergency shelter and low-barrier housing; safe, sanitary temporary alternatives where shelter is unavailable; storage for personal property; mobile outreach; mental-health and substance-use care outside the criminal process; and partnerships with faith-based and nonprofit organizations.

Public safety is not achieved by cycling vulnerable people through arrests, fines, probation, treatment mandates, unpaid labor, and jail. It is achieved by addressing the root causes of homelessness while protecting the constitutional rights and dignity of all people.

Louisiana should not make it a crime to be too poor to afford shelter.

Read more about what’s at stake. ([link removed])

For more than 40 years, The Rutherford Institute has worked to hold the government accountable to the Constitution—especially in moments like this, when fear, expediency, and unchecked power threaten to turn poverty, survival, and vulnerability into crimes.

Your support makes it possible for us to continue challenging government overreach, defending civil liberties and pushing back against efforts to criminalize poverty, dissent and survival.

Please stand with us in this fight for constitutional accountability. ([link removed])

For freedom,

John W. Whitehead
Constitutional Attorney, President
The Rutherford Institute
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Analysis:


** Rutherford Institute Urges Louisiana Governor to Reject Bill That Would Make Poverty a Pathway Into Jail, Debt and Court Control ([link removed])
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Nisha Whitehead
(434) 978-3888 ext. 604
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THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE
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Phone: (434) 978-3888
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You are receiving this email because of your interest in the work of The Rutherford Institute. Founded in 1982 by constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute is a civil liberties organization that provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated. To discontinue your membership electronically, or if you feel you are receiving this message in error, please follow the link below.

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