Tucson goes to 9th Circuit as homeless camp grows

With the downtown homeless camp rapidly expanding, both in numbers and territory, the city has filed an appeal seeking to overturn a court order officials say blocks them from doing anything about it.

On Friday, Tucson City Attorney Mike Rankin filed an appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco asking the court to review the December injunction in U.S. District Court in Tucson that blocked the city from interfering with camp residents free speech protest rights.

The city argues that U.S. District Judge David C. Bury erred in determining the protest could continue at all hours as long as five feet of the sidewalk along Church Avenue in front of Veinte de Agosto Park were left clear for pedestrian traffic.

As of Thursday, the encampment, which homeless occupants have dubbed Safe Park, had grown to more than 40 occupied crates, tents and other quasi-structures lining segments of Congress, Broadway and Church Avenue, in addition to those simply piling up belongings and sleeping bags on the sidewalks.

Under the District Courts reasoning, just as the City cannot enforce (Tucson City codes) in the face of the sit/lie exception, the City would also be precluded from enforcing its sidewalk parking ordinances against a car parked on the sidewalk, as long as the magic five feet are left open and unimpeded and the car is somehow associated with expressive conduct, Rankin wrote.

Rankin said the activities of the homeless people in the park and on the sidewalks do not appear to fit the accepted interpretation of protected speech under the First Amendment.

Tucson respectfully requests that this Court carefully parse the question of whether property used to support a 24-hour occupation is used for expressive purposes, and answer the question whether sleeping or sitting as part of a 24-hour encampment is expressive activity, Rankin wrote.

Rankin also wrote the judges decision was made in error because city code does not permit anyone, even if exercising First Amendment rights, to block the sidewalks at all hours of the day or night with objects boxes, crates, hay, grain, any merchandise, bedrolls, blankets, backpacks, ice chests, bicycles, couches, storage lockers, tents, shopping carts, covered wagons, and piles and piles of blankets.

Since the December ruling the crates, which occupants call dream pods, and other housing units have moved beyond the area Bury designated in his ruling.

Jon McLane, one of the homeless activists behind the movement and lawsuit, said he anticipates the 9th Circuit to reject the citys arguments.

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Tucson goes to 9th Circuit as homeless camp grows