LAW
Are Racist Vagrancy Laws Coming Back? Supreme Court Weighs In
A critique of efforts to criminalize homelessness
5 min readApr 26, 2024
After chattel slavery, America swiftly enacted a series of anti-vagrancy laws. This legislation, some of the first black codes, sabotaged the hard-fought Black freedom. For instance, Virginia passed the 1866 Anti-Vagrancy Act, criminalizing…