OLYMPIA, Wash. — The legal saga over a popular 2023 ballot initiative banning camping within 1,000 feet if schools, parks and other public areas in Spokane continued Tuesday when the Washington State Supreme Court agreed to review it.
A group of petitioners including Spokane homelessness services organization Jewels Helping Hands and former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart challenged the public camping ordinance, known as Spokane Proposition 1.
The group argued in court filings that the initiative should never have been on the November ballot in part because it pertains to an administrative zoning issue, not a legislative issue.
After a Spokane County Superior Court judge rejected a challenge, a state court of appeals also ruled the initiative was valid — calling it a “classic vagrancy ordinance.”
In a filing arguing the state supreme court shouldn’t take up the appeal, attorneys representing Brian Hansen, who proposed the initiative, the City of Spokane, Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton and Spokane County insisted the ordinance was legislative in nature.
“(The ordinance) is not a zoning or land-use-planning ordinance because it says nothing about what property owners can do with their property,” the filing reads. “Instead, it regulates individuals’ conduct on public property. In this way, it is no different from bans on burning and littering on public property” which already exist in Spokane city code.
The petitioners also argued the initiative was a proxy for regulating homelessness, something that could conflict with the Martin v. Boise decision requiring municipalities have areas open for camping if homeless shelter space isn’t available.
The respondents in the case argue the ordinance regulates conduct, not homelessness, and thus the argument doesn’t apply.
If the state supreme court upholds the law in this particular case, legal battles are unlikely to end there.
The Spokane Police Department has held off on fully enforcing the ordinance over concerns officers and the department could be held liable if the law is later found to be unconstitutional in light of Martin v. Boise.
