Faculty Spotlight: Jenny Logan on the Supreme Court and the Crime of Being Homeless

In episode nine of Faculty Spotlight, hosts Lauren K. Wolfe and Mark DeLucas sit down with Jenny Logan, associate faculty (legal studies) and plaintiff’s attorney, at the District Court level, in the case of Johnson v. Grant’s Pass, on which the Supreme Court recently ruled. Speaking from London, Jenny discusses the origins of the case—in which a class of unhoused people sued the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, for imposing criminal penalties on people sleeping in public parks—and explains the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling upholding the constitutionality of Grants Pass’s anti-homeless statutes. What were the stakes of Johnson v. Grant’s Pass; and why, as critics argue, does the Court’s ruling effectively enable the criminalization of homelessness? Why have cities responded to homelessness with largely punitive measures? And how can the case of Grant’s Pass, whose only shelter is a religious mission, be situated within the wider history* of the evangelical-neoliberal alliance to undermine the New Deal social contract and welfare state? What is the future of “poverty governance” in the United States? 

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Faculty Spotlight is an occasional series of the Podcast for Social Research, produced by Ryan Lentini. If you like what you’ve heard, consider subscribing to Brooklyn Institute’s Patreon page, where you can enjoy access to all past and future episodes of the podcast.