Clarence Thomas appears open to making drug addiction illegal

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas identified a previous ruling that he would like to upend.

The conservative majority sided with an Oregon city that prohibited unhoused people from sleeping on public land, and Thomas said in his opinion in the case that he would like to "dispose" of a 1962 ruling that struck down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics, reported Newsweek.

"In an appropriate case, the Court should certainly correct this error," Thomas wrote.

The court relied on that decades-old ruling in Robinson v. California to decide that penalizing homeless people for sleeping on the streets when no other shelter was available did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

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"Rather than criminalize mere status, Grants Pass forbids actions like 'occupy[ing] a campsite' on public property 'for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live,'" the ruling read.

Thomas argued that Robinson didn't need to be reconsidered to decide City of Grants Pass, Oregon, v. Gloria Johnson, but he signaled he would be wiling to take up a case that challenged that earlier ruling.

"Rather than let Robinson's erroneous holding linger in the background of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, we should dispose of it once and for all," Thomas wrote.