Bradford v. City of Tucson
When local businesses and a neighborhood association sued Tucson, AZ, to try to force the city to sweep unhoused people from their neighborhood, the Public Justice Debtors’ Prison Project, alongside the National Homelessness Law Center and local counsel at the Law Office of Paul Gattone, sought to intervene on behalf of community organizations that serve the unhoused population in Tucson’s parks. The businesses brought their request as a public nuisance suit, a strategy that had been increasingly used across the country to get around constitutional protections for unhoused people, who cannot be criminalized for sleeping or existing outside when no adequate alternative shelter is available, and who—like anyone else—have Fourth Amendment rights in their property. When intervention was denied, we filed an amicus brief arguing that nuisance laws do not provide property owners with an end run around the Constitution—and that it is unconstitutional to punish people for their involuntary status of being homeless.