Joel v. City of Orlando, No. 99-14535

• Citation: 232 F.3d 1353
• Decision Date: 13 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-14535
• Parties: (11th Cir. 2000) James S. JOEL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF ORLANDO, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

Page 1353

232 F.3d 1353 (11th Cir. 2000)

James S. JOEL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF ORLANDO, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 99-14535.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

November 13, 2000.

November 28, 2000

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.(No. 98-00344-CV-ORL-22B), Anne C. Conway, Judge.

Before BLACK, CARNES and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

James Joel, a homeless person, was arrested by City of Orlando ("City") police officers for violating Section 43.52 of the City's Code. That provision prohibits "camping" on public property, which is defined to include, among other things, "sleeping out-of-doors." Joel filed a complaint in the district court claiming that Section 43.52 violates his rights under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the City and Joel appeals. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. FACTS

James Joel is a homeless person. Twice in 1998, City police officers found Joel sleeping on the sidewalk and arrested him for violating Section 43.52 of the City Code. Joel's first arrest was February 28, 1998, for which he spent one day in jail. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served. His second arrest was March 2, 1998. To that charge, Joel pleaded not guilty and remained in jail until March 9, 1998, at which time the City prosecutor declined to prosecute.

Section 43.52 of the City Code provides:

Camping Prohibited; exceptions.

(1) For the purposes of this section, "camping" is defined as:

(a)Sleeping or otherwise being in a temporary shelter out-of-doors; or

(b)Sleeping out-of-doors; or

(c)Cooking over an open flame or fire out-of-doors.

(2) Camping is prohibited on all public property, except as may be specifically authorized by the appropriate governmental authority.

(3) Camping is prohibited on all property in the City used for residential purposes; provided, however, that camping is permitted on such property with the permission and consent of the property owner.

To assist the police in enforcing city ordinances, the City promulgated a handbook entitled the Most Used City Ordinance Book, which the parties refer to by the acronym "MUCOB." The notes concerning Section 43.52 that are contained in the MUCOB read as follows:

Local court rulings have held that in order to "camp", the suspect must do more than simply fall asleep on city property. There must be some indication of actual camping. One or more of the following should exist before an arrest under this section is appropriate:

(1)the property must be public property, including highway overpasses;

(2)the suspect is inside a tent or sleeping bag, or the suspect is asleep atop and/or covered by materials (i.e.bedroll, cardboard, newspapers), or inside some form of temporary shelter;

(3)the suspect has built a campfire;

(4)the suspect is asleep and when awakened volunteers that he has no other place to live. Homeless persons should additionally be advised of alternative shelter available at the Coalition for the Homeless.

(5)Upon arrest, evidence of camping (sleeping bags, bedroll, cardboard, newspapers, etc.), should not be destroyed, but should be seized and placed in Property and Evidence. Other personal property of the Defendant, which is not evidence, should be taken to the Orange County Jail with the Defendant.

Simply being asleep in a public place during late night or early morning hours makes the camping case stronger, but is not alone sufficient to justify an arrest under this section unless there is some indicia of true "camping" as noted above.

The Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, Inc. ("Coalition"), referred to in the quote from Section 4 of the MUCOB, is an organization which provides shelter, food, housing, education, and support services to the homeless. It operates a 3.3 acre campus in downtown Orlando, including a Men's Pavilion that accommodates 500 homeless men and provides them with shelter, meals, showers, and laundry facilities. The Coalition charges a one dollar per day fee for staying in the shelter and is open 24 hours per day, year - round. The shelter has never reached its maximum capacity and no individual has been turned away for lack of space or for inability to pay the one dollar fee. Other local organizations also exist to provide shelter and resources for the homeless in Orlando.

B. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Joel filed a three-count complaint in the district court on March 26, 1998, challenging under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments Section 43.52, in particular the prohibition against sleeping in public. He contended that Section 43.52:(1) encouraged discriminatory, oppressive, and arbitrary enforcement, (2) was unconstitutionally vague, (3) bore no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose, (4) violated his right to travel, and (5) violated his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. He sought a declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and money damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983.

The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment and stipulated that "[t]here are no material facts left for litigation." In an order dated October 22, 1999, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the City. Joel appeals, raising the same arguments as in the district court except that he has abandoned any contention that Section 43.52 violates his right to travel.¹

II. DISCUSSION

We review de novo a district court's entry of summary judgment, see Browning v. Peyton, 918 F.2d 1516, 1520 (11th Cir.1990), and decide de novo any legal issues relating to the constitutionality of a city ordinance, see Rodriguez v. United States, 169 F.3d 1342, 1346 (11th Cir.1999).

A. THE EQUAL PROTECTION CLAIM

If an ordinance does not infringe upon a fundamental right or target a protected class, equal protection claims relating to it are judged under the rational basis test; specifically, the ordinance must be rationally related to the achievement of a legitimate government purpose. See Bannum, Inc., v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 157 F.3d 819, 822 (11th Cir.1998).

Homeless persons are not a suspect class, nor is sleeping out-of-doors a fundamental right. See D'Aguanno v. Gallagher, 50 F.3d 877, 879 n. 2 (11th Cir.1995) (homeless not a suspect class); Kreimer v. Bureau of Police for the Town of Morristown, 958 F.2d 1242, 1269 n. 36 (3rd Cir.1992) (same); Davison v. City of Tucson, 924 F.Supp. 989, 993 (D.Ariz.1996) (same); Johnson v. City of Dallas, 860 F.Supp. 344, 355 (N.D.Tex.1994) (same), rev'd on other grounds, 61 F.3d 442 (5th Cir.1995); Joyce v. City and County of San Francisco, 846 F.Supp. 843, 859 (N.D.Ca.1994) (declining to be the first court to recognize fundamental right to sleep), dismissed, 87 F.3d 1320 (9th Cir.1996); State of Hawaii v. Sturch, 82 Hawai'i 269, 921 P.2d 1170, 1176 (App.1996) (noting that there is "no authority supporting a specific constitutional right to sleep in a public place" unless it is expressive conduct within the ambit of the First Amendment or is protected by other fundamental rights). But see Pottinger v. City of Miami, 810 F.Supp. 1551, 1578 (S.D.Fla.1992) (indicating in dicta that homeless might constitute a suspect class), remanded for limited purposes, 40 F.3d 1155 (11th Cir.1994), and directed to undertake settlement discussions, 76 F.3d 1154 (1996). Consequently, rational basis review is appropriate.

The rational basis test is applied in two steps, which we have described as follows:

The first step in determining whether legislation survives rational-basis scrutiny is identifying a legitimate government purpose-a goal-which the enacting government body could have been pursuing. The actual motivations of the enacting governmental body are entirely irrelevant.... The second step of rational-basis scrutiny asks whether a rational basis exists for the enacting governmental body to believe that the legislation would further the hypothesized purpose. The proper inquiry is concerned with the existence of a conceivably rational basis, not whether that basis was actually considered by the legislative body. As long as reasons for the legislative classification may have been considered to be true, and the relationship between the classification and the goal is not so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational, the legislation survives rational-basis scrutiny.

Haves v. City of Miami, 52 F.3d 918, 921-22 (11th Cir.1995) (internal quotations and citations omitted); see also TRM, Inc. v. United States, 52 F.3d 941, 945-46 (11th Cir.1995). Under rational basis analysis, an ordinance or other legislative enactment is entitled to a "strong presumption of validity," F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314-315, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 2101-02, 124 L.Ed.2d 211 (1993) (citing Lyng v. Int'l Union, United Auto., Workers, 485 U.S. 360, 370, 108 S.Ct. 1184, 1192, 99 L.Ed.2d 380 (1988)), so much so that our review of enactments under the rational basis standard must be "a paradigm of judicial restraint," id. at 314, 113 S.Ct. at 2101.

Applying the first step of the rational basis test, we readily conclude that the City could have been pursuing a legitimate governmental purpose with Section 43.52. It could have been seeking to promote aesthetics, sanitation, public health, and safety by enacting an ordinance to prevent sleeping out-of-doors on public property. As for the second step, a rational basis exists for believing that prohibiting sleeping out-of-doors on public property would further aesthetics, sanitation, public health, and safety. See Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 296-98, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 3070-71, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984)²; Hershey v. City of Clearwater, 834 F.2d 937, 940 (11th Cir.1987) (prohibition against use of vehicles as dwellings...