The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling in Gregory Smith v. Municipality of Anchorage that overturns the Superior Court’s dismissal of an appeal that challenged the Anchorage’s campsite abatement process.
The case stems from a June 2022 notice posted by the Municipality at Davis Park, a notorious occupation of public property. The notice announced a “zone campsite abatement” to clear the area of unauthorized campsites. Anchorage Municipal Code outlines procedures for such abatements, including a requirement to post notice and a provision allowing appeals to the Superior Court within 30 days.
Six individuals, including a man named Gregory Smith, filed an appeal, arguing that the abatement process violated due process by allowing the seizure of personal property without a hearing and infringed on Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment by removing essential items from homeless individuals.
The Superior Court dismissed the appeal, concluding that its jurisdiction was limited to reviewing whether the posted notice met the legal requirements of the municipal code, not the broader decision to abate the campsite. The judge found that since the appellants did not dispute the notice’s compliance with the code, their claims fell outside its authority.
In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Peter Maassen, the Alaska Supreme Court reversed the dismissal.
The Supreme Court held that the Superior Court’s jurisdiction actually extends beyond the notice’s legal sufficiency to include substantive challenges to the abatement decision itself, such as the constitutional issues raised by Smith. It is unusual for a Superior Court to handle constitutional questions of this nature, and this represents a major win for the ACLU.
The ruling emphasized that the municipal code’s language, which describes the posted notice as a “final administrative decision” subject to appeal, does not restrict review to the notice alone.
The court also pointed to the legislative history of the AMC, noting that prior versions allowed administrative hearings on the legality of campsites and property disposition, suggesting no intent to narrow judicial review.
The Supreme Court also addressed the Municipality’s submission of a minimal two-page administrative record, consisting only of the posted notice.
The Municipality argued that the record limited the court’s ability to review constitutional claims.
The Supreme Court has rejected this, instructing the Superior Court to determine whether the administrative record is sufficient for meaningful appellate review.
The case was remanded back to the Superior Court for further proceedings, handing the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska a temporary win, in that it has filed a brief supporting Smith’s appeal.
People want their parks back! People want to feel safe when out walking! We pay taxes to be able to have clean and safe neighborhoods without having to step over human excrement or being worried about getting robbed!
Alaska has one of the most liberal Supreme courts in the country. Thanks to the people who worked on the statehood constitution.
Thanks, AK Supremes. Anything to enable bums (oh, excuse me, people experiencing homelessness) who equate and destroy public and private property. As a taxpayer and a contributing member of society, I’d be put in handcuffs and given a cell at Anchorage Pre-Trial if I did what these vagrants do.
Excuse me……..
Has anybody out there reading this ever taken a legal case all the way to the state Supreme Court? You don’t do this for free, and you don’t do this on the salary of an unemployed homeless person. James Martin III started this camping on the sidewalk silliness in Anchorage long ago, and we STILL haven’t learned who guided him through this social engineering disaster. I’m starting to smell a herd of rats, and that odor is becoming a bit familiar. Any decent investigative journalist could “follow the money” and let its readers know who is doing this to us. For example, an attorney brought this case to the Supreme Court. Did anybody see his/her name in this article? Isn’t anybody else starting to detect the odor?
I sure hope it’s not my tithing paying for this, which I already know has been supporting illegal immigration for years……….
Okay, now let’s talk about the ability of the “homeless” to profit from illegal activity, like trespassing on public lands, stealing bikes, selling and doing drugs, etc.
If I were selling drugs and stealing bicycles, I would be put in jail, but because these are “homeless” people, apparently they have more rights than I do.
Someone once said that the public was an ass, but I think perhaps in this case it is the judiciary that is an ass.
Soooooooooooo…..Greg smith went to law school? Or he got a lot of help from somebody.
Either way this is one more instance of the drain on public resources that the homeless have become. Tax dollars for court cases, tax dollars for abatements, tax dollars for police and emt visits, tax dollars to clean up the constant messes left, tax dollars to feed and cloth, tax dollars for mental health, tax dollars for job preparedness…..this is a self perpetuating problem.
So the Alaska Supreme Court sides with people who choose to break the law.
Why do I still want to live here…?
Cruel and Unusual Punishment.? What part of illegal camping in a public park – funded by property payers – being trashed by said campers/unhoused/criminals/thieves and manipulators of the system, isn’t an 8th Amendment infringement upon the law-abiding citizens of Mountain View? These people, enabled by the Assembly and now, the AK Supreme Court, are not entitled to the fruits of other people’s labors. Now that it’s summer in Alaska, the only thing the campers/unhoused/criminals and thieves should hear is that they must leave, will have nowhere else to move to and, will be arrested and relocated to a facility that will demand that they rehabilitate and take an active part in the process. If not, it’s a dog-eat-dog existence and survival of the fittest. In short, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” And I’m not referring to Frank Zappa.
I drove by Davis Park today. The “personal property” of the vagrants is garbage, much of it having already been set on fire. The smell was atrocious, even from the inside of my closed up vehicle driving by at 30 mph. Half of the area has already been burnt. Garbage piles are everywhere.
This has to be a bad joke. Why is the Alaska Supreme Court even wasting its time hearing arguments about this? Who was arguing on behalf of these human wrecks and their “personal property”? There has to be a name attached to this insanity.