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!
2 solutions, stop paying taxes until the city does it’s job. You wouldn’t pay for cable if your cable was out would you. Secondly carry a gun, openly, it’s still Alaska, Alaskan s have a state and federal constitutional right to carry a firearm for protection. I always carry when I go for a walk, you never know what wild animal you might run into wolf, bear, hobo, angry beaver.
They don’t care – at all.
Drive 7 mph over the speed limit and see what they care about.
They will only hold working, white, straight, males to the letter of the law.
Everyone else – kinda depends…
J Kirk, agreed. It deters tourists which is crucial to small business owners, as well as giving people the freedom of being able to relax and take a walk in the greenbelts. I had a family member that got chased by someone who lived in a tent in the greenbelt area and now can’t walk or run by themselves on paved trails in Anchorage.
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.
Yup Tamra – you get it.
These miscreants can commit vagrancy, loitering, trespassing, panhandling, littering, shoplifting, public urination and excrementation, public intoxication, theft, assault, sexual assault amongst others and they get a free pass.
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.
I am just a rando, but I may just stop by Davis park on my literal day off in 2 weeks and just see what’s up.
Being homeless in AK. Different than other places. But drugs mess up everyone.
Even drunks and the chronic schizophrenic is capable of identifying and cleaning up garbage. Whidbey, defend this sort of behavior. Who is arguing for the taxpayer’s right to a clean community.
ACLU
I kinda look forward to the Supreme Court taking up this issue sooner rather than later. We have some new members of the Supreme Court. Although it will take some time litigate this a the trial court level, perhaps the Supremes can ultimately bring some order to the chaos of the vagrant encampments.
Just Annex 500 acres on the other side of cook inlet. Designate it year round camping and abate everyone living outside year round to that camp. Why is this so difficult for the public to demand this?
It shows that judges in Alaska are never elected but appointed only out of their own nomination.
Where was Supremes when ALL the people of Alaska were deprived of their dividend by that lawyer governor Walker.
The fricking assembly needs to making camping on public property not designated as a campground illegal. PERIOD. The law should also mandate immediate seizure and destruction of any equipment confiscated. This crap has to stop. These people are a complete negative to society, they do not even police up their own garbage. Those photos posted on MRAK do not even begin to document the GARBAGE surrounding the area. They are living in mud, excrement, garbage. There will be public health issues soon. This should be attributed directly to the hobo caucus on the assembly.
Welcome to wokeatan Alaska thanks to so many stupid voters
Why can’t you work with them not against them this issue will never get resolved been like this for years when is it ever going to change
This is happening all over Alaska all the way down the Panhandle. We need to stop this encroachment of BUMS living on the skids into our parks and streets. The answer is stop helping them. Look at Vegas. They will come fine YOU for giving money to bums there. They only allow those with a talent of some sort to amuse the people there. If not they are escorted out of the area. Stop feeding them, giving them tents and things. They are not folks just down on their luck. They are career drunks and addicts that do not want to work and be part of society.
What you allow, WILL continue. Clearly these towns in Alaska are doing alot wrong by enabling them.
Are there any attorneys willing to file a class action lawsuit against the city on behalf of tax paying law abiding citizens for its failure to protect its citizens from the harmful effects of this blight on our city and the inability to enjoy the public spaces taken over by the vagrants who somehow have an endless supply of attorneys standing up for their “rights”. The rights of the vast majority of citizens should outweigh the law breaking behavior “rights” of the long term campers who contribute nothing and only spread filth all over the city. Are there any attorneys who care about the beauty of our city who are willing to take this on?
Dirk, Great post and I am totally on board with this. How do we get this ball rolling?
Those attorneys you speak of don’t work for free. Everything has a cost, and the cost is especially high when you talk about the loss of quality of life in Anchorage. Good people will continue to leave, the pool of property tax money will slowly dry up and Anchorage will be another failed social experiment. The city’s heart hollowed out by a bunch of liberal grifters who could not care less about you. The list of Democrat run cities that are sinking into the abyss continues to grow. Anyone with eyes to see knows why the city is failing, but the Dems running it into the ground will act like noone could have seen it coming. Leave while you still can.
I’m not looking for anything for free. I’m not a leftist.
A lot of them are from the lower 48,they need a background check on them. They are running from the lower 48 for some reason
Why pay fees to Anchorage landfill? Just dump your trash at a “homeless camp”. The city will clean it up. Comes right out of your taxes.
With the Carrs on 13th and gamble closing, leaving the nearest shopping center, Fred Meyers, several miles south along the highway and no pharmacy within site. The mental health consumer web is nice but what will replace the Carrs? And Davis park soon to be abated. Things are looking to get worse. Worse for who though? Maybe 40% of the “homeless” actually DO have a place to stay every night. Maybe about 20% of the actual homeless are the ones that cause crimes and disturbances. Feel like the Carrs should be replaced by a rec center geared towards drug abuse, recovery and MENTORSHIP! The “Homeless type” like to network at 4-corners And no one wants to be subjected to a person sitting on a bucket, on a neighborhood walking path, sharpening their knife with a tent and trash nearby. Turn the Carrs into a homeless REC CENTER! And let SALA provide the medical and medical transport services along with donated bus passes.
You can buy the Ghetto Carrs and open a center for bums. No one is stopping you.
But don’t ask the tax payers to shovel more money into the bottomless pit of “Helping the homeless”. The Municipality has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 30 years with zero results.
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