The Supreme Court will review the case for homeless residents who sleep in public

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether homeless people have the right to camp on public property. The issue is the biggest SCOTUS case in decades on homeless rights, and the ruling has the potential to affect how cities across the U.S. handle the homelessness crisis.

Grants Pass, located in southwestern Oregon with a population of nearly 40,000, asked the high court to review a lower court ruling that found it unconstitutional to punish homeless people for camping on public property when there are no shelter alternatives.

According court filings, there are no homeless shelters in the city, and the two private housing programs in the city “serve only a small portion” of the homeless population. The plaintiff's attorneys wrote how in 2013, Grants Pass “began aggressively enforcing a set of ordinances that make it illegal to sleep anywhere on public property with enough blankets to survive cold nights.”

The filing added: “The Ninth Circuit correctly concluded that the city's efforts to involuntarily punish homeless people for simply existing in Grants Pass exceed “substantial Eighth Amendment limits on what can be considered criminal and punishable as such.''

The issue has brought together liberal and conservative leaders in the unlikely position of urging the Supreme Court to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, and other Democratic leaders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Honolulu, have asked the high court to reconsider restrictions on homeless encampments — joining conservatives Arizona Legislatorsand the district attorneys supporting the appeal.

“California has invested billions to address homelessness, but rulings from the bench have tied the hands of state and local governments in addressing this issue,” Newsom wrote in a statement Friday. “The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly backlog of lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear the camps and provide services to those in need.”

In previous amicus briefCalifornia's governor argued that as the state “invests billions to address housing and homelessness, the courts have tied the hands of state and local governments that seek to use common sense approaches to clean up our streets and provide relief to homeless Californians living in inhumane conditions.”

The Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in April and a decision is expected in June.