So so much to talk about with Tim sander for Vice President for Litigation the Goldwater Institute. Tim's latest book, Freedom's Furies. How Isabel Patterson Rosewilder Lane ein Rand found liberty in the age of darkness? In an age of darkness?
There are many owes.
You a facetive American history nobody ever talks about in the twentieth century, how enamored the progressives were with totalitarians, And on that note, perhaps introduced our crusader for liberty, Tim sanderfer hate Tim.
Hey guys, thanks for having me on.
And as I always like to point out, referred to as a national treasure by George will of The Washington Post, Tim Sanderford.
But fortunately I'm not in a senator's closet like other treasures.
Right, that's gold bars. Wow, that is old school. Anyways.
I guess you go in there with a pocket knife and like skim off a few shavings and use those to go buy gas or something.
I guess I wonder if he actually had those sacks of money with dollar signs on.
I was signing them like scooge McDuck.
You know, all right, Well, let's get down to business there has been a seemingly large victory recently in Maricopa County that's a Phoenix essentially Arizona, where a judge has said enough with the junkie camps. Can you explain to folks what happened.
Yeah, So, this is a lawsuit that's been going on for quite a while now because of the city purposely creating an open air homeless shelter so to speak, in the streets of downtown Phoenix, where over a thousand people at a time have resided in tents right on the streets, and that the city has been transporting the homeless people to this area and then just saying do what you want, We're not going to enforce the law, which of course
has been destroying the local businesses, ruining people's homes in the area. It's been leading to there's been arson, there have been dead bodies found in this area, all these sorts of you know, sewage in the streets. So there's a group of them filed a lawsuit, and what happened earlier this week was a trial judge in America County has declared that the city is maintaining a public nuisance
and must clear up the area before November fourth. That means remove all the tents and get rid of the sewage and stop allowing the law breaking in this area.
Get rid of the sewage is a sanitized way to explain what was going on there.
Yeah, and you know, Arizona law, like what most states, prohibits the people from polluting in a way that will run off into the local rivers and things. And here in Phoenix, you know we had when we get a rain storm. Man, it's a huge flash flood rainstorm.
It's squashed looting, polluting, yet another loyally high follutin way of saying people are crapping on the streets.
Exactly, that's right, and on the sides of people's buildings, on their home. Our client in the case actually had to replace the windows in his building because the urine was so bad that it had rotted away the seals on all of their windows.
That's gross.
Now, the reason this has been going on is not just because the city has been refusing to enforce the law. But when you ask the city, they say, well, our hands are tied because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a couple decisions that say that it's unconstitutional for us to arrest people for sleeping on the streets if there are not enough shelter beds in homeless shelters to give them a place to stay for the night. Now,
it is true. The Ninth Circuit issued a couple rulings, one called Martin versus Boise, another ones called Johnson versus Grants Pass that both do say that it's unconstitutional for the government to arrest people for sleeping on the streets if they can't help it, and they define can't help it as there aren't enough shelter beds available. And worse than that, the ruling actually excludes from the count any shelter beds at churches, any shelter beds that churches operate.
Those are religious, those not secular, those don't count when you count how many shelter bus.
So, so outlawing any Christian charity or church charity, that's fandast.
That's basically ruling out the number one source of homeless shelters right anyway. So the big story here really is that that one of those cases, the Grants Past case, the people have now asked the U. S. Supreme Court to take up that case, and in the ruling that this judge in Phoenix issued he urges the U. S. Supreme Court to take up that case. He says, to the extent that a state trial judge could have any influence on the US Supreme Court's decision to review a
lower court ruling. This judge respectfully urges the Supreme Court to review that ruling and overrule it because it has caused so much chaos in the Western States, because cities see it as an excuse to not enforce laws against loitering and camping and so forth.
Well, I was just going to ask, Tim, you know so much more about this than we do, given the unbelievable negative effects of that. You know, I usually cite the ruling but grants pass as well. How has the Supreme Court not looked into this, particularly given its current makeup.
The Court has this long standing tradition of allowing things to develop in the lower courts before it takes up an issue, and sometimes an important issue gets postponed for years before the US Supreme Court finally decides to take it up. But I don't see how they could possibly
refuse to take up the issue at this point. It has caused so much chaos or I mean that's a little bit unfair because, to be fair to the Ninth Circuit, there, the Martin case and the grands Pass case both say that cities can still enforce laws against camping in the streets, at least under certain circumstances. And so what's actually happening here in Phoenix is that the city officials are using these cases as an excuse to not do their job. And it's a colorable excuse. It's you know, it's it's
not a totally crazy interpretation of those cases. But it's really the fault of local officials who are refusing to take action because it's politically unpopular. They want us, you know, oh, we have to build housing first. All these sorts of excuses, and these these Ninth Circuit rulings are convenient excuses to refuse to take actions.
Well, since you follow the Supreme Court so closely in the thinking of all the justices, what do you think they would do with this issue?
Oh? I think they would definitely overturn it because the logic is crazy. What the Ninth Circuit says is a person is involuntarily homeless if there aren't shelter beds available for them, that the government provides, and therefore it's cruel and unusual punishment to arrest them for sleeping on the streets. This is crazy logic. By this logic, if I were to go to a bar and get drunk and then drive home drunk from the bar, it's not my fault
because the government didn't hire me an uber. You know, the whole theory here is that people are incapable of controlling themselves unless the government steps in and controls them for them, and then otherwise they're just they're helpless little waves who couldn't possibly take acts. It's a crazy way of looking at the world, although you know there are a lot of people who idlow logically just think that you can't run your own life without the government stepping in to hold your hand all the.
Time, right, you know, I'd have thought that because of the enormous human cost of so many of these junkie camps, as I generally refer to them, because addiction is the number one reason for most of these people being on the street, and certainly not exclusively, but it is. There are just dens of drug addictions, but the number of overdose deaths has shocked the conscience of every American over the last several years.
I can't believe.
Maybe do the Supreme Court justices not get the nexus between drug addiction and homelessness.
I think that the Ninth Circuit, you know, it's the Ninth Circuit, And their view is that, you know, these people need to be treated in some other fashion. We shouldn't arrest them, we shouldn't in voluntarily take them and move them somewhere else, and these sorts of things, and
this is a sort of false compassion. They think that, well, we don't want to be cruel to these people, Okay, so you're all alternative is to let them sleep on the streets, and not just sleep on the streets, but for well over a year now in Phoenix, Arizona, where in the summer it gets one hundred and twenty degrees and during the pandemic. This is what you think is a more compassionate alternative than getting these people treatment, even
if it might be quote involuntary treatment. And that logic escapes me.
Well, then in n angle always bring up us how about compassion for taxpayers and business owners? So is there any way to have the law be leaning toward how about my right to live in this neighborhood and go to my local park and not be afraid or not have junkies in the doorway of my business, so I can operate.
Totally right, absolutely, the real victims here of what Phoenix has done, I mean, the homeless have suffered badly enough, But on top of that, the real victims are the innocent, tax paying property owners and business owners in this area. The New York Times a while back profiled one of the business owners, a guy who runs a really well known sandwich shop. Who's I mean, not only have has
it there been the pollution. Not only do people just not come there anymore because they don't want to be around them.
I like what you call human crap pollution.
But go on, but a lot of homeless people are coming into the business, harassing and endangering the employees. He has to then he's basically being drafted into being a psychological counselor for people with mental problems and drug addiction, right because the government refuses to come in and do
its job. Now, what are the alternative? There is actually a proposal that we've been working on that says, if the government fails to do its job under these kinds of circumstances and it destroys the value of your property. The government should compensate you for the loss of property value, because they're the ones that fault for ruining your property. And we will have more to say on that once we've developed more among those lines really interesting.
Tim Sander for Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute.
Tim I came across an.
Article in the USA today surprisingly about a woman who is being denied the right to open to business because she wasn't able to get one of those certificates of necessity.
Is that what they're called? Yeah, that's right.
These are basically permit laws that say they don't have anything to do with whether you are capable or whether you have the education or card. It doesn't have anything to do with that. These are laws that say you have to first get permission from all of the competitors who are already in that industry before you're allowed to start a business. And guess what, they usually say no because they don't want economic competition. And these kinds of
laws are called con laws. Appropriately enough, these kinds of laws apply to everything from moving companies to medical clinics in this country, and it's totally insane and in my view, totally unconstitutional.
Yeah, well, we'll have more on that to come. We appreciate the time very much. Keep fighting the good fight. Yeah, you know, sometimes I think sanity might have a chance. Not often, but occasionally.
I'll tell you, guys, the law part is my job, the sanity part, that's your job.
Well, God to help them, Erica. Effluvium is my favorite word for human waste. By the way, it's so musical. Tim Sandifer, good to talk to you, Tim, Thanks Budd
Thanks guys, Armstrong and Getty