Words & Phrases We Can Do Without

‘Civil commitment’ means locking up people without housing

“Civil commitment”—rounding up people and locking them up—is Donald Trump’s answer to the nation’s homeless problem, as set out in another executive edict. You need not be a sociologist to understand that homelessness, which afflicts hundreds of thousands of people, results from multiple factors, including lack of affordable housing, rampant evictions, and insufficient access to drug addiction and mental health treatment. This regime and past GOP administrations that have slashed funding for housing, addiction treatment, and mental health have inarguably worsened the problem.

Rather than provide additional funding or support programs that do work (e.g., fund Medicaid anti-addiction programs, or support “housing first” programs to get people off the streets quickly and then provide social services), Trump’s decree seeks to bludgeon states and localities to criminalize homelessness, by fining or locking up people living on the streets without shelter. Such a harsh rationale only underscores that Trump prefers barbarism to responsible social policy with adequate funding.

Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has held that the 14^th Amendment requires that states meet a high standard of proof before incarcerating people against their will. As a Congressional Research Study in 2023 pointed out:

“[I]n 1979, the Court established that the threshold burden of proof for civil commitment hearings was more than a mere civil preponderance standard, holding that the state must demonstrate its case for involuntary hospitalization with clear and convincing evidence.”

Since then, state and federal legislation has put in place procedures to afford due process for commitment and to protect patients’ rights if they are confined.

Does the Trump plan intend to wipe away those protections (as has been the case in mass migrant roundups and deportations)? Ignore those protections altogether? Or is this just smoke and mirrors that offers no real change and no funding to facilitate homelessness remedies? The executive decree speaks about actions “consistent with existing law,” but such a vague catch-all allows all manner of government overreach as the Trump regime “interprets” existing law. (Remember this regime’s willingness to misapply the Enemy Aliens Act in deportation cases.)

In Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court opened the door to round ups and incarceration by holding that cities that lack adequate housing options could nevertheless turn the homeless into criminals. As has happened so many times, Trump thereafter barged through the open door and tore it off the hinges, trying to bully states to stigmatize and dehumanize a group of people, deploy force in place of social services, and leave states holding the bag for funding.

Joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent in Grants Pass, noting that the MAGA majority had ignored Supreme Court precedent that deems it unconstitutional to punish people for their status (e.g., drug addiction). We know, however, that the MAGA justices don’t let stare decisis stand in the way of Trump’s violent and inhumane agenda. (This raises the frightful prospect the partisan MAGA majority will also eviscerate due process rights to ease forced commitment and deprive patients of control over their own treatment.)

The ACLU responded swiftly to Trump’s executive pronouncement. “Pushing people into locked institutions and forcing treatment won’t solve homelessness or support people with disabilities. The exact opposite is true—institutions are dangerous and deadly, and forced treatment doesn’t work,” a written statement declared. “We need safe, decent, and affordable housing as well as equal access to medical care and voluntary, community-based mental health and evidence-based substance use treatment from trusted providers.” Instead, Trump is sucking $1Trillion out of Medicaid, “the number one payer for addiction and mental health services.”

Numerous mayors, governors, social scientists, and mental health advocates lambasted Trump’s announced policy. “I’m very concerned about the executive order,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has reduced homelessness in her city two years in a row. “[I]t’s calling for pushing people into treatment—where are the dollars? Where are the locations?” She continued, “I believe that people should be offered treatment, as well, but right now we don’t have the facility because cuts are being made to the very programs that he wants to push people into.”

As Justice Sotomayor pointed out, criminalizing homelessness may lead to a cascade of worse outcomes. Separated from their meager possessions and at risk of violence and potential re-addiction in prison, homeless people may be less likely to get off the streets after they are released. Adding this senseless conviction to their record may extinguish any hope of future employment. Fining people (in lieu of prison) with no means to pay their debt makes even less sense.

Trump perversely wants to badger cities to cut off programs that work in favor of state violence and expensive, counterproductive criminalization. As NPR reported:

Trump’s order also calls on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to defund addiction programs that include “harm reduction.” This is certain to disrupt frontline health care programs that work to reduce overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs.

Addiction experts consider harm reduction, including programs that provide clean needles and other paraphernalia, to be an essential part of helping people survive addiction. Trump's order repeats the claim that such programs encourage drug use, an argument disproven by years of research, including by federal scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Treating homelessness with a police force and curtailing strategies that work—all while slashing funding for the social safety net—is the sort of cruel, red-meat performative politics that juices up the MAGA base but does nothing to address the problem.

If this scheme unleashes mass roundups and forced incarceration, the executive decree would take us further down the road of cruel authoritarianism that other anti-democratic leaders have pursued. We must dispense with anodyne terms such as “civil commitment,” which aim to disguise a brutal and inhumane approach to homelessness. We have already seen what happens when shock troops are empowered to indiscriminately round up migrants and subject them to disgraceful detention conditions.

Americans must not condone Trump’s attempts to move closer to a brutal police state, whether the targets are migrants, homeless, or other groups the president opts to dehumanize.