SOCIAL JUSTICE BLOG
Read and share the extraordinary stories from the frontlines of social change
Impact Fund Grantees Combat Injustice & Score Major Victories in 2023
As we approach the end of 2023, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our grantees’ incredible accomplishments. This year, Impact Fund grantees achieved meaningful change for a wide range of communities experiencing injustice, including incarcerated people, racial justice protesters, mobile home residents, unhoused people, and more. We were honored to help support these cases, which demonstrate how impact litigation can be an effective tool to hold powerful entities accountable.
Housing Not Handcuffs: Victory In Boise Continues to Resonate Nationally
As stories of our country’s failure to adequately address homelessness make national headlines, with incidents like the murder of Jordan Neely on the New York City subway, elected officials are trying to make Americans see things simply, like homelessness as a personal choice, rather than the result of systemic failures. They want to make it a crime to be homeless, with police arresting those who simply don't have a place to live. That's ridiculous, and bad for our whole community. Because no matter your race or background, people don't choose to be homeless, and arresting people experiencing homelessness isn't the answer. The groundbreaking Martin v. Boise case has pushed communities toward the right answer—making sure everyone has a place to call home –since it was decided at the 9thCircuit in 2018.
Class Action Challenges San Diego's Criminalization of Homelessness
A lot is at stake in this case. Punitive approaches to sheltering in vehicles are reflective of the larger, nationwide policy shift toward criminalizing visible poverty in a harmful, expensive, and futile effort to police our way out of the growing homelessness crisis. When inherently innocent survival conduct, like sheltering, is treated as a punishable offense, the rights and freedoms of all human beings are threatened. It is critical to fight for protection of our freedoms in the courts.
Victory for Unhoused People in Ocala, Florida - Court Rules City Ordinance Unconstitutional
After Patrick McArdle’s eighth arrest in early 2019 for sleeping on public property in Ocala, Florida, he could no longer accept the injustice of being arrested merely because he was unhoused. When he was unable to make bond, he decided to spend his time in jail in the library, researching constitutional caselaw about sleeping ordinances. When he stumbled upon Martin v. Boise, he felt vindicated — he was now sure the City’s efforts to arrest and incarcerate unhoused residents in Ocala for sleeping outside were, like Boise’s, in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Arrested Just For Being Homeless
Janet Bell, a resident of Boise, ID, became homeless more than ten years ago, but it was only after she was arrested for sitting outside that she took the city to court.
Janet, who lost part of her left arm, and nearly her life, from an infection that she caught living outside received her first of multiple citations simply for sitting on a riverbank with another individual. Janet, like most homeless people, couldn’t afford to pay the tickets and eventually she was arrested. The city targeted many other homeless individuals in this manner.