It’s cliche to observe that socially conservative views emerge when liberals are “mugged by reality.” But when it happens to the governor of California and the local leadership of Portland and Seattle, it’s not trite — it’s important. That’s exactly what has happened in the form of a push by leaders from every Western state asking the same Supreme Court they so often vilify to overturn the 2019 ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that local governments may not clear homeless encampments unless they can offer shelter for all those taken off the streets.

The argument to overturn emphasized the obvious: “The friction in many communities affected by homelessness is at a breaking point … and residents are suffering the increasingly negative effects of long-term urban camping.” Those, tragically, include tent cities, where open drug use, crime, human waste, and severe untreated mental illness are rampant. One can be sure that a breaking point has, indeed, been reached when even Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) says the courts should not “block any number of reasonable efforts to protect homeless individuals and the broader public from the harms of uncontrolled encampments.”