The Las Vegas City Council voted in favor on Wednesday reinforce the camping ban affecting homeless people who sleep and congregate in public spaces.

Council members voted 6-0 to amend the ordinance without public discussion. The development took place Tuesday after the Clark County Commission has adopted its own new camping ban, which takes effect on February 1.

The city law, which took effect in 2020, applies to public streets, alleys, sidewalks, paths and washes.

The amended ordinance — which takes effect Sunday — adds possible penalties, such as mandatory prison terms, and removes a provision that the law could not be enforced if there was no public shelter space available.

Before people are given a written warning or fine, they must first be told they are breaking the ordinance and told about social services, according to the ordinance.

Any person convicted of the misdemeanor offense more than twice in one year is liable to imprisonment for up to 10 days.

As an alternative to jail time, “a court may order a defendant to complete a rehabilitation program, specialty court program or other treatment program designed to assist the homeless,” according to the city’s ordinance.

Adaptation to the decision of the Supreme Court

The city said the change came in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year.

Las Vegas and the city of Henderson, which also has a camping ban, signed a “friend of the court” brief supporting Grants Pass, Ore., where the Supreme Court case originated and where fines for people found sleeping in the air freely were under discussion. .

The judges overturned a lower court ruling in 2018 that said the camping ban amounted to cruel and unusual punishment when shelter space was lacking.

Las Vegas previously said the amended ordinance “largely mirrors” the law already in place and that its outreach to the homeless community that provides social services has not changed.

“The ordinance is intended to provide homeless individuals with the opportunity to receive assistance so that they no longer have to live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions on the streets,” the city said.

Opponents have argued that such bans criminalize homelessness.

“This is not simply an ordinance to help clear sidewalks or guide homeless people to services,” Elizabeth Becker of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada countered at an earlier City Council meeting.

Becker said the bans trap homeless people in the legal system “simply for existing in public spaces.”

Attorney Tia Smith of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada warned the city that the ordinance opened Las Vegas up to potential litigation.

While the high court said the bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment, she said, it does not “declare that such ordinances are wholly permissible or constitutionally valid.”

She added: “Law enforcement officers will be tasked with applying the ordinance on a case-by-case basis, leading to confusion and inconsistency.”

Clark County’s ban and the city’s change came after the county in September released the results of a one-day census that found a 20 percent year-over-year increase in the sheltered and unsheltered homeless population in Southern Nevada, the largest number from 2014.

Volunteers counted 4,202 people living on the streets in January, a 7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Southern Nevada Continuum of Care Homeless Census.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at [email protected] Follow X @rickytwrites.