Cities and counties are increasingly restricting sharing food with persons experiencing homelessness in public spaces as a response to the visibility of homelessness, particularly if large groups are gathering in public parks for purposes of sharing a meal together. In a twist on the criminalization of homelessness, local governments are now arresting and citing people who wish to help unhoused people, using laws that restrict the use of public space through permit requirements or force groups to comply with food safety requirements. Due to the efforts of Southern Legal Counsel and our co-counsel, food sharing is now considered protected expression in the 11th Circuit, and governments restricting expressive food sharing activities are subject to First Amendment scrutiny.

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Persons experiencing homelessness constantly face the threat of arrest because they must be physically present somewhere. Homeless individuals, like all citizens, have a constitutionally protected liberty interest to be in public places of their choosing. Yet governments across Florida increasingly use trespass warnings to banish persons experiencing homelessness from public places. These bans have a significant impact as they make a person’s physical presence in public a crime, and often restrict people’s access to public areas where other members of the public have a right to lawfully be. When the government takes this right away by issuing a trespass warning banning them from returning to City parks or other public property, it deprives them of a protected liberty interest. The government violates the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause when it issues such trespass warnings without first providing notice and an opportunity for a hearing.

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Individuals have the right to ask for help under the First Amendment. Charitable solicitation, i.e., panhandling, is protected speech. Laws prohibiting requests for charity are content-based restrictions that can be challenged under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Cities and counties are permitted to regulate protected speech, but only through constitutionally proscribed means. Many ordinances that are used to arrest and incarcerate homeless people today are unconstitutional on their face and only remain in use because they have not yet been challenged in criminal or civil courts. In particular, recent U.S. Supreme Court developments have led to lower courts striking down panhandling ordinances across the country that are similar to ones on the books all across Florida. Southern Legal Counsel is actively working to challenge these laws in cities across the state.

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Many cities and states have statutes or ordinances that prohibit sleeping or camping on public property, which effectively criminalize sleeping out-of-doors, a crime many individuals experiencing homelessness must commit in order to survive. Many of these so-called “anti-camping” ordinances criminalize not only activities typically associated with camping, such as pitching a tent and making a fire, but also merely covering oneself with a blanket, a jacket, or a piece of cardboard to keep warm. Because sleep is a basic human need, essential for survival, the impact of criminalizing sleep (in the absence of alternatives for homeless people to meet this need) is to make the status of being homeless a crime. Southern Legal Counsel has established precedent in Florida that cities may not criminalize sleep if there is not adequate shelter available to the unhoused.

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Property sweeps continue to feature in local government responses to address the visibility of homelessness on city streets and in encampments across Florida. These property sweeps of homeless camps are cruel and ineffective at addressing root causes of homelessness, causing significant harm. Often the manner in which property sweeps are conducted violate constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and rights to due process. While no amount of money can compensate persons experiencing homelessness for the loss and destruction of irreplaceable belongings during property sweeps, we have obtained monetary awards for clients and other relief to stop cities from depriving homeless residents of their dignity and the destruction of irreplaceable property.

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The criminalization of poverty subjects unhoused individuals to a seemingly never-ending cycle of jail, debt, and other collateral consequences. In Florida, the consequences that flow from this criminalization include the assessment of criminal court costs and the suspension of a driver’s license when one is unable to pay these court costs. However, in many cases, the laws that criminalize the life sustaining conduct of individuals experiencing homelessness are local ordinances that do not permit the imposition of criminal court costs or license suspension for nonpayment; however, Clerks of Court are in many cases unlawfully assessing these criminal court costs and suspending driver’s licenses in an effort to collect unpaid sums. Southern Legal Counsel aims to stop these unauthorized practices.

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